Edward’s marriage may succeed
LONDON, June 12 — Prince Edward will soon set out on the rocky terrain of royal matrimony with Sophie Rhys-Jones, no doubt with the same high hopes as his brothers and sister had.

Caring for the aged a burden in China
SHANGHAI, June 12 — To Chinese philosopher Confucius, it was clear who was responsible for the welfare of the elderly. “It is nowadays commonly understood that any child’s duty is to take care of their parents’ livelihood,” China’s most influential thinker lectured in the sixth century B.C.

Smoking is ‘un-Islamic’

43 love letters to Queen auctioned

NATO troops move into Kosovo
Russian soldiers told to withdraw

BLACE, Macedonia, June 12 (Reuters) — NATO troops advanced by land and air into Kosovo at dawn today in a long-awaited operation to ensure the safe return of nearly a million ethnic Albanian refugees.

Chinook and Puma helicopters carrying the vanguard of British paratroopers and Gurkhas and their vehicles clattered over the mountainous Macedonian border to secure the highway to the provincial capital, Pristina, for the main force.

British Sappers faced the dangerous task of clearing the first 24 km from the border of mines and booby-traps that may have been left by retreating Serb forces.

Two columns of 1,200 French troops, including units from the foreign legion, pushed forward from two crossing points further to the east in one of the biggest military undertakings in Europe since World War II.

But the advance was overshadowed by the overnight arrival in Pristina of Russian troops, who were ordered by their Foreign Minister to withdraw to the border into Serbia and await instructions.

The surprise development triggered frantic talks between Washington and Moscow, and the Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov admitted it was “unfortunate”.

The column of up to 200 Russians, traditional allies of the Serbs, in Pristina around 4 am IST. Crowds mobbed the convoy as it drove through the capital, climbing on the armoured vehicles and waving Serbian flags.

Russian news agency Itar-Tass earlier said Russia and the Yugoslav military had agreed that Russian, rather than NATO forces, should be the first to enter Kosovo.

MOSCOW (DPA): Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said early on Saturday that the movement of Russian troops into Kosovo was an “unfortunate mistake” and that they have been ordered to leave the Serbian province immediately, CNN television reported from here.

TIRANA: A plane crashed while attempting to land at an airfield in the northeast Albania town of Kukes, police officials have said.

“An airplane has exploded in the airfield of Kukes a few minutes before midnight,” a local policeman said on the telephone on Friday.

USA seeks facts on mutilated bodies

WASHINGTON, June 12 (UNI) — The Clinton Administration has described as “disturbing’’ the reports indicating that Pakistan has turned over six mutilated bodies of Indian soldiers, saying that the USA is seeking more information to get at the truth.

Replying to a question yesterday, State Department spokesman James Foley said, “I would note that Pakistan has denied these reports. We don’t, for our part, have independent information on the reports and, therefore, can offer no judgement.’’

He, however, said the incident did underscore the urgency of the need for India and Pakistan to speak directly with each other about the current hostilities in Kashmir. “As you know, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Mr Sartaj Aziz, will visit New Delhi (today) for talks on the fighting in the Kargil sector.’’

Mr Foley said the USA strongly supported talks between India and Pakistan to resolve the latest dispute. “We remain in contact with the Indian and Pakistani governments to express our strong concern, to urge them to show restraint and to respect the Line of Control that they agreed to over 25 years ago.

We also urge them to prevent the fighting from spreading beyond the Kargil sector and to work together to reduce tension,’’ he added.

Earlier, giving an update on the current situation, he said Indian air and ground attacks continued in Kargil, against infiltrators from Pakistan. “India continues to report the capture of some strongpoints.

Increase in Pak’s defence budget

ISLAMABAD, June 12 (AP) — With a battle raging on its disputed Kashmir border with India, Pakistan today announced a $ 12 billion budget that called for a $ 2.6 million increase in defence spending.

Defence will be given $ 2.6 billion compared to last year’s actual defence spending of $ 2.4 billion.

Defence has always been a big ticket item in Pakistan’s budget, the cost of which is usually blamed on ongoing hostilities with India.

As Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced his budget, outside the rolls of barbed wire, hundreds of police personnel in riot gear surrounded the building to stop protesters from staging a demonstration outside Parliament.

The demonstrators were mostly businessmen protesting against the sales tax. Also among the estimated 300 protesters were members of the Jamaat-e-Islami Party, who accused the government of wasting money and sending prices of staples soaring.

Benazir accuses Pak of wasting funds

ISLAMABAD, June 12 (PTI) — Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has accused the Sharif regime of squandering away precious public funds and demanded that the names of those who transferred foreign currency accounts abroad shortly before a freeze on such transfers last year should be made public.

In a statement issued in yesterday, London, where she is staying, Ms Benazir accused the ruling regime of abusing power at the height of a national crisis precipitated by sanctions and demanded that it heeds to an apex court order to reveal the names of those who transferred their foreign currency out of the country.

Islamabad had declared a financial emergency soon afterwards freezing all foreign currency accounts to prevent a panic outflow of desperately-needed forex reserves.

Benazir also accused the ruling of demoralising the nation through corruption and misrule.

Edward’s marriage may succeed

LONDON, June 12 (AP) — Prince Edward will soon set out on the rocky terrain of royal matrimony with Sophie Rhys-Jones, no doubt with the same high hopes as his brothers and sister had.

Edward, the last of Queen Elizabeth II’s children to marry, may have a slightly better chance of success when he and his bride walk down the aisle of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, on June 19.

Having had a front-row seat at the dramatic marriage failures of Prince Charles, Princess Anne and Prince Andrew, the youngest brother is forewarned about some of the potholes.

There is certainly no talk of fairy tales this time.

“A divorce, were it unfortunately to happen, would merely be melancholy recognition of a trend,” columnist Mark Lawson commented in The Guardian.

In the weeks before the wedding, the country showed no signs of investing its romantic dreams in this couple, as it did with Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. The couple has not exactly rushed into marriage.

Edward, a television producer who is seventh in line to the throne, is 35 and has been courting his intended since the autumn of 1993, when he first got to know her through her public relations work.

Unlike Princess Diana, who was an aristocratic 19-year-old kindergarten teacher when she got caught up in the royal whirl, Miss Rhys-Jones is a 34-year-old businesswoman with her own public relations firm and is expected to continue working.

“If anybody can cope with it, then she can,” her business partner, Murray Harkin, said when the engagement was announced in January. She is very discreet, loyal and extremely level-headed.”

The 98-year-old mother of the Queen is lending her house at Windsor to the Rhys-Jones family for the wedding so that they won’t have to stay in a hotel, a fact more remarkable than it sounds.

As the marriages of the Queen’s other children fell apart, one of the criticisms of the royal family was that its members had been downright distant to the in-laws.

The Queen seems determined to get things right this time.

She gave immediate and unequivocal support to her future daughter-in-law last month when The Sun published an old snapshot of Miss Rhys-Jones with one of her breasts exposed.

Plans for the big day were on a smaller scale than previous royal state weddings.

This ceremony will be a family-and-friends affair at Windsor Castle’s Gothic Chapel, without military processions.

About 600 guests and 6000 people, mostly from the local area, have been sent tickets to watch at close quarters the royal wedding.

Caring for the aged a burden in China

SHANGHAI, June 12 (DPA) — To Chinese philosopher Confucius, it was clear who was responsible for the welfare of the elderly.

“It is nowadays commonly understood that any child’s duty is to take care of their parents’ livelihood,” China’s most influential thinker lectured in the sixth century B.C.

However, shortly before the jump into the third millennium, the Chinese find it difficult to follow the Confucian ideal. With society ageing rapidly, caring for senior citizens has become a burden which the younger generations find increasingly difficult to shoulder.

The one-child policy enforced since the late 1970s, along with sharply increased longevity, have caused the quick ageing of China’s population.

In this aspect, too, the commercial metropolis, Shanghai is one step ahead of the rest of the country. Here, almost one-fifth of the 13 million citizens are aged 60 or over.

In 2030, this number will reach 4.8 million people, or 36 per cent of the population, according to official estimates. “Caring for the elderly is putting immense pressure on the government”, said Shanghai’s Deputy Mayor Feng Guoqin.

With the ongoing birth control programme, a new family type — the so-called “1-2-4 model” — has emerged: one child, two parents and four grandparents.

In the past, several children and grandchildren could guarantee a secure livelihood for the old. But now, and in generations to come, one single child and his or her spouse will have to take care of four elderly people.

The problem has been further aggravated by the reform of China’s state enterprises, which has resulted in the lay-off of millions of workers.

Government-run companies, previously dubbed “iron rice bowls” which guaranteed life-long care, now have difficulties in paying pensions to former staff.

Confronted with these problems, the Chinese leadership in 1995 devised amendments to the pension system, which were tested in several cities.

However, time is running out. “China will have a high-income economy’s old-age burden with a middle-income economy’s resources for shouldering it,” say World Bank experts.

China should take advantage of the current rapid economic growth to secure care for the aged in generations to come, they recommend.

This would include building nursing homes, but even in this sector, the state alone is incapable of satisfying the steadily increasing demand. Shanghai’s city council has granted substantial tax privileges to potential private operators of such nursing homes.

Smoking is ‘un-Islamic’

DUBAI, June 12 (DPA) — Smoking and selling tobacco are violations of the Islamic law, according to Muslim clerics in the United Arab Emirates, local newspapers reported today.

The announcement was made by clerics during Friday prayers at mosques around the country using a text prepared by the Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs.

The ministry statement said according to the Koran, anything that endangered human life was prohibited and warned that smokers who refused to give up, ran the risk of “leaving Islam”.

The statement also urged officials to consider the ban.

43 love letters to Queen auctioned

LONDON, June 12 (AP) — A set of 43 love letters sent to Queen Elizabeth I by The Earl of Essex, in the beginning of 1591, were sold at an auction for $ 266,400.

The letters were bought yesterday on behalf of an undisclosed British Institution, the Phillips Auction House said.

They spanned the time from Essex’s stint as the Queen’s favourite courtier to his beheading in 1601 for trying to launch a rebellion.

The letters still carry the appropriate seals and are thought to have been returned to Essex’s mother, The Countess of Leicester, after the Queen’s death.

Actor dead
LOS ANGELES: Deforest Kelley, the actor who portrayed Dr Leonard “bones” McCoy on the Star Trek television series and movies, has died. He was 79. Kelley’s McCoy, along with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, was one of three leading characters in the 1966-69 television series, which has run almost continuously in reruns for three decades and spawned several sequels, movies, and a cult following of fans known as `trekkies’. — DPA

Corpse under bed
ARLANTIC CITY: Two German tourists spent the night on a local motel bed without discovering that the source of a foul stench in the room was a corpse stuffed in the space beneath their box-spring, the Pressplus has reported. The tourists, who had paid $ 36 to spend Wednesday night in the room, complained the following day of the smell and were switched to another room. Maids who then cleaned the room the Germans left found the body of a man with multiple stab injuries stuffed under the bed’s box-spring. — DPA

Convicted for cursing
DETROIT: A Michigan man has been convicted of violating a century-old law by cursing in the presence of children after he fell out of a canoe on Michigan’s rifle river last summer. Timothy Boomer faces up to 90 days in jail and a fine of $ 100 for violating the 102-year-old law after a brief trial that grabbed national headlines for efforts to enforce civility in public. Boomer issued a string of profanities after his canoe capsized. — DPA

Soldiers for Viagra
SYDNEY: Senior soldiers on Friday said they deserved orgasms at the Australian taxpayer’s expense and would campaign for the anti-impotency drug Viagra to join false teeth and reading glasses on their list of entitlements. A motion calling for free supplies of the potent blue diamonds will be put at a meeting of Veterans’ Associations in Perth at the weekend. — DPA

Online prostitution
LOS ANGELES: The police has nabbed a Hollywood madam who catered to the town’s rich and famous via a sophisticated internet operation that is an example of the kind of operation contributing to a huge rise in online prostitution. — DPA