China to form group on political stability
BEIJING, Dec 29— A new high-level group to maintain social and political stability and combat infiltration by some foreign countries is in the offing in China, media reports said today. The move comes after the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee had established a temporary leading group on rectifying national affairs,a leading newspaper from Hong Kong, said.

Parties fix May 17 for Israeli poll
TEL AVIV, Dec 29 — Israel’s major parties have set May 17 as an election date, a sign that a Palestinian threat to declare a state before then has receded and will not influence the campaign.

Theme restaurants face tough time
NEW YORK, Dec 29 — The “Everything Must Go’’ sign in the window of Television City, the theme restaurant that offers TV junkies a place to eat and watch football, news and classic movies all at the same time says it all.

Pen precedes scalpel to avoid surgical gaffes
NEW YORK Dec 29— The patient in surgeon Michael Schafer’s Chicago operating room scrawled a note on his arm in felt-tip marker. It said, “I hurt here,’’ with an arrow pointing to his elbow.

China to form group on political stability

BEIJING, Dec 29 (PTI) — A new high-level group to maintain social and political stability and combat infiltration by some foreign countries is in the offing in China with President Jiang Zemin to head it, media reports said today.

The move comes after the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee had established a temporary leading group on rectifying national affairs, South China Morning Post, a leading newspaper from Hong Kong, said.

The group had been given the task of upholding social stability and combating “infiltration” by foreign countries, it said.

“Jiang has indicated the party needs to use a combination of police control, economic measures and diplomatic initiatives to maintain order in the sensitive year of 1999,” the paper said quoting a diplomatic source.

“Beijing will serve warning on Western countries not to maintain ties with dissident organisations in China,” the report said.

As head of the party’s leading group on foreign affairs, Jiang had the final say over the extent of pressure to be applied on foreign countries to stop the “infiltration” of the mainland, the paper’s Political Editor, Willy-Wo-Lap Lam, said.

Security sources in Beijing said the authorities had also asked banks to keep closer tabs on the movement of funds that might benefit dissidents.

They said the police suspected that funds, including aid from organisations in unnamed foreign countries, were first transferred to the accounts of private companies having links with dissident groups.

China last week sentenced four dissidents to 10 to 13 years in prison for trying to oppose the 49-year-long rule of the Communist Party of China.

The last dissident to be jailed for 10 years was a labour activist, Zhang Shanguang. Last week three founders of a banned opposition party were also jailed.

Several international human rights organisations and Western governments, including those of the USA Germany and France, have denounced the latest Chinese crackdown on dissidents.

However, China has rejected their criticism by pointing out that the jailed persons were criminals and Beijing would not tolerate attempts by foreign countries to interfere in the country’s internal affairs.

Parties fix May 17 for Israeli poll

TEL AVIV, Dec 29 (AP) — Israel’s major parties have set May 17 as an election date, a sign that a Palestinian threat to declare a state before then has receded and will not influence the campaign.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had wanted to set the elections before May 4 — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s deadline for Independence — in order to maximise the threat of Palestinian statehood in his hard-line campaign.

We agreed on the 17th of May, said Mr Meir Shetreet, a senior government legislator, yesterday after a day of negotiations with the Opposition Labor Party. It must pass the Law Committee and the Knesset next week, but there is wide support, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t.

No ‘deal making’ on impeachment

WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (AP) — With the impeachment debate squarely in his court. Senate majority leader Trent Lott faces his toughest challenge yet as the senate prepares to consider President Bill Clinton’s fate.

Mr Lott, a Republican from the southern state of Mississippi, has been largely silent on the shape of the Senate’s impeachment proceedings next month, but he is getting plenty of public advice from his colleagues.

The Senate is to hold proceedings on two articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives. But the White House, along with many Senate Democrats, are seeking a compromise punishment for Mr Clinton that would avoid a formal Senate trial.

Mr Lott, according to some who know him, already may have made up his mind. He has said, for example, that the Constitution requires the senate to at least convene a trial, and he excluded any "deal making" before such proceedings begin.

"He listens a lot but I think that he usually has a pretty clear idea to start with about where he wants to go," said Mr Mickey Edwards, former Republican Congressman from Oklahoma who worked closely with Mr Lott while both served in the House.

Senators close to Mr Lott widely believe the movement to oust Mr Clinton lacks the 67 votes to succeed.

Fellow Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran said he hasn’t talked to Mr Lott in weeks. "But it’s not as if this kind of thing is new to him,’’ Mr Cochran said yesterday. He noted that Mr Lott served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate proceedings, which forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974 before a formal impeachment vote was held in the House.

Theme restaurants face tough time

NEW YORK, Dec 29 (AP) — The “Everything Must Go’’ sign in the window of Television City, the theme restaurant that offers TV junkies a place to eat and watch football, news and classic movies all at the same time says it all.

Once considered investment darlings because of a public insatiable in its quest for brushes with celebrity, theme restaurants now face an uncertain future.

“It costs so much to develop. You have to charge higher prices to make money ... and nobody wants to pay those prices,’’ Television City founder David Liederman said on Sunday. “It’s just not worth it.’’

The closure of Television City in Rockefeller Centre comes on the heels of a tough year for theme restaurants. Stock prices have tumbled while owners and developers have been forced to sell or scale back their operations.

The restaurants have had a particularly tough time in New York despite the presence of throngs of tourists.

The glitzy Fashion Cafe, partly owned by supermodels Naomi Campbell and Elle Macpherson, suffered a series of financial setbacks after another owner was accused of mismanaging millions of dollars.

Magic Underground, David Copperfield’s multimillion dollar restaurant under construction in Times Square, has been stalled. Three other proposed New York restaurants — RKO Pictures, Marvel Comics’ Marvel Mania and Chefs of the World — never got off the ground.

Meanwhile, Planet Hollywood, the restaurant founded in 1992 by actors Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Arnold Schwarzenegger announced earlier this month it would sell its New Orlando, Florida, headquarters and a New York restaurant in Times Square to pay creditors. Its stock has plunged from trading in the low $30 range in 1996 to $2.62 1/2 on the New York Stock Exchange as of last Thursday.

But not everyone is pulling in the reins.

A second ESPN Zone restaurant, which features televised games and a constant parade of sports stars, is scheduled to open in Times Square next year, as Disney hopes to follow up on the success of its Baltimore location.

A group of investors led by David Hasselhoff, star of the syndicated smash “Baywatch,’’ has announced plans to develop a chain of restaurants and nightclubs next year based on the show. And the World Wrestling Federation, saying it wants to move into the gaming and themed-restaurant business, has purchased the bankrupt Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

The restaurants also seem to remain popular with the younger set.

Petra Forbes, (14), of Montego Bay, Jamaica, had fun at the all-star cafe in Times Square during her trip to New York, on Sunday. She and a group of friends dined on barbecue ribs.

“The food was good. There were all these things on the walls. I liked it,’’ she said. I want to go to Planet Hollywood next. I would like to meet some movie stars, like Leonardo Dicaprio.’’

But an industry analyst said “it doesn’t matter how good the food is if theme restaurants fail to pull in repeat customers”.

“They are not the best restaurants and not the best places to go for entertainment. You go there once, twice, maybe three times to show a friend. That’s it,’’ said Ron Paul, a Chicago restaurant analyst.

Pen precedes scalpel to avoid surgical gaffes

NEW YORK Dec 29 (AP) — The patient in surgeon Michael Schafer’s Chicago operating room scrawled a note on his arm in felt-tip marker. It said, “I hurt here,’’ with an arrow pointing to his elbow.

In New York, Dr Andrew Rokito’s patient wrote “ yes’’ on one leg and “no’’ on the other. Nearby, Dr. Steven Stuchin’s patient lay with a pink ribbon she tied around her injured leg.

The message was clear: following surgical gaffes in which doctors amputated the wrong foot, removed the wrong kidney and opened the wrong side of a woman’s brain, patients were frightened and mistrustful.

Now hundreds of surgeons are getting the message and putting their John Hancocks on every Tom, Dick and Harriet who comes under the knife.

The trend toward autographing patients’ bodies marks a low-tech effort to avoid what doctors call “wrong-site surgery.’’

The 17,000-member National Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons urged surgeons last March to sign their names on the spot to be cut.

In recent months, hospitals across the nation have adopted the practice to try to curb lawsuits and spare patients undue agony. Among them, the orthopedic surgery departments at New York University, Chicago’s North-western University Medical Centre and Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.

“For all the science and technology and out-and-out hardware, which is worth millions of dollars in any operating room, the most important thing that patients and doctors do is talk to each other,’’ said Stuchin, Director of orthopedic surgery at NYU’s hospital for joint diseases. The $1.50 pen is part of the communications process.’’

Wrong-site surgery is common enough that the practice has its own euphemisms, such as “bilateral confusion’’ and “symmetry failure.’’

From 1985 to 1995 the Physicians Insurers Association of America counted 225 claims for wrong-site surgery by its 110,000 doctors. Willie King won $1.2 million after a Tampa, Fla., surgeon amputated the wrong foot in 1995.

Perhaps most alarming to surgeons, patients win monetary settlements 84 per cent of the time, according to the piaa.

In other words, if you operated on the wrong leg, they were going to pay off,’’ said Dr. S. Terry Canale, who led the surgeon association’s national campaign and operates at the Campbell clinic in Memphis, where surgeons now sign their patients.

Orthopedic surgeons, who specialise in skeletal operations, saw another alarming statistic, one in four of them will operate on the wrong organ in a 30-year career, according to the insurance group.

A number of things can go wrong. In the Tampa case, doctors said both the patient’s feet showed signs of gangrene. Dr. Joseph Zuckerman, director of orthopedic surgery at NYU, has walked into the or to find a patient prepared for surgery on the wrong knee. The X-ray had been labelled backwards.

“This is an uncommon problem,’’ Dr Zuckerman said, “But it’s indefensible.’’

Some victims of wrong-site surgery experience only inconvenience and an unneeded scar. Others pay a hefty price.

Harry Jordan visited the hospital often after doctors removed the wrong kidney in 1983. The Long Beach, Calif., insurance broker was left with one kidney at one-fifth its normal size. He died 13 years after the operation after winning $250,000 in damages.

Rajeswari Ayyappan underwent a second traumatic operation to remove a brain tumor after a surgeon at New York’s prestigious Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Centre operated on the wrong side.

Some of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals don’t make marking patients mandatory.

Visa fees up
KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Government has announced an increase in the visa fees for Indian nationals and setting up of more visa processing offices to prevent congestion at the existing centres. Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Tajoli Rosli Gazali said in a statement on Monday that the increase in visa fees for Indian nationals will be effective from January 1 next year — with single-entry visa (SEV) costing ringgit 50 (Rs 560) and multiple-entry visa (MEV) rm 100 (Rs 1120) a year compared to the present rm 12 (Rs 134). — Bernama

Politician killed
JOHANNESBURG: A South African politician of Indian-origin Ramlal Hariprasad and three members of his family were killed in a helicopter crash in the Kwajulu province here. Hariprasad (56), a member of the Kwazulu-Natal provincial parliament, was piloting his helicopter when it crashed on Sunday, family sources said on Monday. Hariprasad, who was engaged in the truck business, had financed Mangosuthu Buthlezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party and played a major role in the development of impoverished African people in Durban. — PTI

Flu epidemic
BEIJING: The Chinese capital is in the grip of an influenza epidemic which has affected thousands, including Indian Embassy staff. Doctors say abnormal weather over north China together with arrival of the A3 strain influenza virus has rendered an increasing number of people susceptible to infections of the upper respiratory tract. Work in the Indian Embassy almost came to a standstill last week when a number of senior diplomats as well as office staff reported sick for almost five days, one official said. — PTI

Balloon quest
BERN: Switzerland is optimistic that China will soon grant a Swiss-based balloon team permission to fly over the country in its quest for the first non-stop round-the-world flight. A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has said. The Breitling Orbiter three-member team said last week it postponed its attempt due to Chinese irritation over the failure its rivals. Chicago millionaire Steve Fossett, British Tycoon Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand to respect previously agreed conditions. — AP

Disneyland mishap
ANAHEIM: A tourist who was struck in the head by a piece of flying metal while waiting to board a sailing ship at Disneyland has died, the first ride-related fatality at the theme park since 1984. Luan Phi Dawson was brain-dead for nearly 11 hours before life support was removed on Saturday, his doctors said. The Drange County Coroner’s office said it would investigate Thursday’s accident, which also left Dawson’s wife, Lieu Vuong (43) and a Disneyland employee hospitalised. — AP