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| Wednesday,
January 17, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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El Salvador quake toll above
600 Saddam largesse to ‘poor’
Americans Kuwaiti women denied voting right Japan lawmaker held for
bribery Fischer sheds light on rebellious
past N. Korea’s Kim on secret trip |
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El Salvador quake toll above 600 SAN SALVADOR (El Salvador), Jan 16 (Reuters) — The confirmed death toll from the devastating earthquake in El Salvador rose to more than 600 on Monday with about 500 persons still missing and feared dead. Strong aftershocks from the quake on Saturday rattled buildings and triggered fresh landslides throughout the day. The police raised the known toll late last night from about 400 dead to 609, with 2,365 persons injured and about 38,000 homes throughout the small Central American nation partly or totally destroyed. Many of the victims were buried under massive mudslides triggered by the biggest quake to hit this coffee-growing nation of 6.2 million persons for at least a decade. But at least, one person, an 80-year-old woman, died after being stung repeatedly by a swarm of bees disturbed by the quake. Emergency workers, masked for protection against air-borne disease and the smell of decomposing bodies, unearthed scores of bodies on Monday but found nobody alive. Duncan Campbell of the Guardian adds: A fiercely contested private property development, engulfed in a mudslide when the earthquake struck El Salvador, was being blamed for the high number of casualties in the worst affected area. The earthquake was unusual for Central America in that its main victims lived in a middle-class suburb, Las Colinas. Normally the victims of earthquakes in the region live in shanty towns and cheap homes built on the sides of hills or in the least safe areas of a town. The municipal government for the area had tried to prevent a construction company from building mansions on the hilltops over Las Colinas - (“the foothills’’) but had failed after a long legal battle. “They took us to court, sued us for $ 4.5 million and won,’’ city controller Jose Noe Torres told the Los Angeles Times. “This is the result.’’ Jose Luis Rodriguez, whose mother-in-law was one of the victims, said: “The earthquake was the work of God but this, this is the work of man.’’ As an example of local feeling about the construction, residents booed President Flores when he visited the disaster site over the weekend. What has also emerged is the increasing sophistication of rescue operations in the region. Many of the deaths that have traditionally followed an earthquake, through disease or the inability of the rescue teams to trace survivors quickly, can now be avoided. Stockpiles of medical equipment, clean water, blankets and tools are kept at an emergency warehouse in Miami so that they can be flown to wherever they are needed in Central America. While organisations like the Red Cross, UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organisation have acquired much experience on the ground and provide swift aid, newer organisations like the France-based Telecom Sans Frontiers (TSF) providing telecommunication assistance, have entered the field. Spokesmen for TSF, which is sponsored by France Telecom and Inmarsat, said they take satellite phones to disaster areas which could be used by rescue workers to communicate with each other in places where telephone and power lines were almost certainly not functioning. The phones could also be used for survivors to contact relatives. There were now eight such TSF workers in El Salvador. “They scan the news wires and leap on a plane often without a visa,’’ said spokesman. The earthquake also demonstrated the wide range of international cooperation, with the Mexicans sending troops, the Colombians sending coffins, the Spanish sending sniffer dogs, the Americans sending medical supplies and a variety of international aid organisations pooling resources. |
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Saddam largesse to ‘poor’
Americans PRESIDENT-ELECT George W Bush’s plans to cut government aid to the poor and let private philanthropists shoulder the burden is already reaping its reward. It was announced yesterday that $ 95 million US had been donated to impoverished Americans by Saddam Hussein of Baghdad. Despite a decade of biting international sanctions and a poverty rate in Iraq of more than 50 per cent, Saddam Hussein has apparently decided to mark the tenth anniversary of the Gulf war by sending humanitarian aid to America’s inner cities and rural poor. A statement put out by the Iraqi News Agency (INA) said a special commission would be set up to help supervise the distribution of the funds. Given the current state of relations between the two countries, it is unlikely that the USA will allow Saddam’s uniformed lieutenants to wander the streets of the Bronx or east
Washington, distributing his dole, which would work out at about $3 for each American living under the poverty line. The INA statement said the UN would be told of the donation, suggesting that its aid workers might help implement the programme. The UN in New York said it had had no word from Baghdad about the donation, and its response would depend on where the money was coming from. Since the Gulf war Iraq has been allowed to use the proceeds of its oil sales only to buy food, medicine and other essentials for its own people. “It’s unclear if this is money the government of Iraq has lying around or if it comes from the oil-for-food deal,” the UN spokesman said. “If it is from the oil-for-food deal, then it would have to go before the Security Council Sanctions Committee, to see if [it] would be allowed.’’ The committee is still bemused by Saddam Hussein’s previous philanthropic outburst, in December: the promise of Û1bn (or $ 950 million) - he refuses to talk dollars - to help the Palestinian struggle against Israel. In the West Bank and Gaza they are not holding their breath: his earlier promises to send troops came to nothing. But his claim to have so much cash to send abroad may end up hurting his efforts to have the sanctions lifted. Some security council members are said to have questioned whether the sanctions regime is tough enough, if he has so much money to give away.
— The Guardian, London |
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Kuwaiti women denied voting right KUWAIT, Jan 16 (AP) — Kuwait’s highest court rejected a case today in which activists had pleaded for women to have the right to vote and run for office in this oil-rich state. “The court has decided to reject the case,” said Judge Abdullah al-Issa, president of the Constitutional Court, offering no immediate explanation. Frustrated with the 50-seat legislature that voted down an emiri decree and a Bill for suffrage in 1999, women activists and their male supporters took their case to courts. The case rejected today was filed by a Kuwaiti man, Adnan-al-Issa. He sued the Elections Department for failing to register the names of women, including his wife, on voter’s lists. An Election Challenges Court referred his case to the Constitutional Court for a definitive ruling. “I expected this ruling. The orientation of the whole state is fundamentalist and parliament has rejected suffrage before,” Mr al-Issa said Meanwhile, the Arab father of a seven-year-old girl kidnapped in the Philippines has offered to pay a ransom or exchange himself for his daughter, a newspaper reported today. Azam Hamed, 52, who resides in Kuwait, said he was prepared to pay 900 dinars ($3,000) demanded by the kidnappers ‘or be held captive in her place’. He said his daughter April Azam Grant had apparently been abducted from her home in Mindanao last week because she held a British passport. Mr Hamed said his daughter had obtained her passport through her Scottish stepfather, Douglas Grant. He said Grant converted to Islam before marrying his ex-wife Mina Rasul, changed his name to Abdulla and performed the Muslim pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia. The British Foreign Office in London had earlier said that the abducted girl was not a British national and that her blood father was a Palestinian. Four armed men suspected of belonging to Muslim rebel groups abducted the girl on Wednesday night while she was watching television with her mother. |
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Japan lawmaker held for bribery TOKYO, Jan 16 (Reuters) — Japanese prosecutors today arrested a lawmaker from the party of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, setting the scene for a rough session of parliament this month as the new scandal threatens to engulf his government. Prosecutors arrested Takao Koyama, member of the upper house from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), over allegations that he received more than 11 million yen ($92,390) in bribes from scandal-hit industrial insurance provider KSD, domestic media reported. The scandal forced the resignation yesterday of LDP veteran Masakuni Murakami as head of the LDP group in the Upper House group to take responsibility for the scandal involving Koyama, who once served as his secretary. Koyama’s troubles deal an additional blow to Mr Mori, already battling support at record lows and fighting a court battle over his alleged links to a gangster. Chief government spokesman Yasuo Fukuda said the scandal was regrettable. “Anything that causes people to further lose their trust in politics must be taken very seriously,” he told a news conference. Members of Mr Mori’s LDP-led three-way ruling coalition are already loath to fight July Upper House elections with Mr Mori at the helm after he led the party to one of its worst performances in elections for the powerful Lower House last year. The party lost its simple majority. Prosecutors suspect Upper House lawmaker Koyama received the cash in 1996 from former KSD president Tadao Koseki in return for asking questions in parliament that were advantageous for the insurer, whose main clients are small businesses. Koseki was charged last year with breach of trust for misusing the insurer’s money and Koyama’s involvement is widely seen as the tip of the iceberg of a scandal involving many more LDP lawmakers, domestic media said. The scandal has already touched senior members of Mr Mori’s government. Last month, Japanese media said Economic Minister Fukushiro Nukaga had allegedly taken 15 million yen from the disgraced KSD president. Nukaga said one of his secretaries had received the funds, but he was not notified until May. He returned the money a few days later, media reports said. Fukuda, however, denied that government ministers had worrisome links to the firm. “I do not think there are any cabinet members who will face difficulties over this,” he said. The opposition camp looked set to take advantage of the scandal to launch a fresh attack on Mr Mori’s leadership in the regular parliamentary session that will start on January 31. The opposition parties are likely to
reunite their drive to embarrass Mr Mori in the run-up to Upper House elections scheduled for July.
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Fischer sheds light on rebellious past FRANKFURT, Jan 16 (Reuters) — German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer described his conversion from passive 1968 student protester to active street fighter at the murder trial of an excomrade on Tuesday, but said he opposed armed struggle. Fischer was giving testimony as an unusual character witness in the murder trial of Hans-Joachim Klein over the attack led by international guerrilla Carlos “the Jackal” on an OPEC Oil Ministers’ meeting in Vienna in 1975, in which three died. Fischer has long acknowledged the left-wing radicalism of his youth. But recently published photographs of him involved in riots and his confession of protest exploits have grabbd headlines and sparked a debate over his suitability to represent Germany abroad. Addressing the court, Fischer, also Germany’s Deputy Chancellor, denied ever using weapons, including firebombs. But after police beat him and his first wife during a 1968 rally he had decided to defend himself in scuffles with officers. Fischer, like Klein now 52, said the radical leftist scene in Frankfurt in the late 1960s and early 1970s — where he knew Klein — was torn by differences over the use of violence. “The violence question was discussed back and forth. My position was always clear. I didn’t see where it could lead other than self-destruction ... the destruction of what we stood for,” Fischer told court. “There was a massive dispute about the armed struggle, seizing weapons, killing,” he said, describing armed violence as “Stalinist”. “It had nothing to do with freedom. It would produce a disaster and it did produce a disaster”. Judge Heinrich Gehrke repeatedly asked Fischer if he could remember whether Klein had shown a particular interest in weapons or ever discussed taking street battles with police a step further to organised guerrilla attacks. “I can’t remember any discussion where it would have been allowed to discuss intentionally hurting or even killing somebody,” Fischer said of Klein, who had shaggy hair and wore a thick black coat as he sat in the dock. Fischer’s own fighting past came to the fore earlier this month when a magazine published photographs of him attacking a policeman during at 1973 Frankfurt street demonstration. |
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N. Korea’s Kim on secret trip BEIJING, Jan 16 (Reuters) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was in Beijing today on a secret visit to China, South Korean and Japanese media reported, but there was no confirmation from either side. South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper quoted a South Korean government source as saying that Kim arrived in Beijing yesterday and was likely to meet Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji and visit Shanghai during a week-long visit. Japan’s Kyodo news agency quoted a government source in Seoul as saying that Kim was holding talks with Chinese leaders on inter-Korean relations and North Korea’s relations with the USA under incoming President George W. Bush. The JoongAng Ilbo said Kim was accompanied by about 20 high-ranking officials, including Jo Myong-rok, head of the General Political Department of North Korea’s army, who visited Washington in a landmark trip in October. SEOUL: Meanwhile, North Korea announced the establishment of diplomatic ties with the Netherlands in another sign that the impoverished country is emerging from isolation. |
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Eight is enough: Liz WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) — Film diva Elizabeth Taylor, who has been married eight times, vowed during a rare live interview on Monday never to tie the knot again, although she said she could live with a man again if he had a good sense of humour. Ms Taylor, who turns 69 next month, told CNN’s “Larry King Live’’ she’d had two great loves in her life: Richard Burton, whom she married twice and divorced twice, and Michael Todd, who died in a plane crash just 13 months after marriage. She said she still adored Sen, John Warner, a Virginia Republican, to whom she was briefly married. But she was less kind about crooner Eddie Fisher, whom she married in 1958, stealing him away from his then wife Debbie Reynolds. “I don’t even want to mention his name,’’ she said. Ms Taylor and Reynolds have teamed up to make a television movie, “These Old Broads,” that airs on ABC next month. The two will join Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins in a two-hour singing and dancing comedy replete with petty jealousies, diamonds, phony British accents and the comebacks of aging screen divas. She told CNN she and Reynolds had often talked or “dished” about fisher, whom they referred to as “Harry Hunter,” and that Reynolds was no longer angry at her. “We got over all that so long ago,” she said. In fact, the ABC movie includes a scene in which Taylor and Reynolds spar over an old incident in which Taylor’s character stole the husband of Reynolds’ character. “I did you a favour by taking Freddy away,” says Taylor. “I would have been perfectly able to lose Freddy on my own,” retorts Reynolds. Asked in Monday’s interview if she would marry again, Taylor shot back: “No.” “You’re done?” he pressed. “Yes,” she said, adding that “I’d live with someone if he were cute, intelligent, compassionate, adorable and had a good sense of humour.’’ |
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Japanese man has 44 Cambodian wives? PHNOM PENH, Jan 16 (DPA) — A Japanese man living in north-eastern Cambodia has procured 44 wives, some of them as young as 14-years-old, a report said today. Authorities accused a man they call “Mr Ji.O” of having 18 young wives in 1999, but he has recently more than doubled his holdings, the local Cambodia Daily reported. “This man did not force them to marry,” said Mr Chap Nhalivuth, Governor of Siem Reap. “I don’t know how he did it with all those families, but we could not stop him from marrying.’’ Authorities never issued proper licences for the unofficial “marriages” and the women’s families have not issued complaints, so nothing can be done, official said. But most of the Japanese man’s wives, who are procured from their families by a local liaison who receives a finders fee of as much as $ 2,000, were minors, according to a report published by the Cambodian Centre for the Protection of Children’s Rights. A local liaison gives $ 10,000 to the families for the girls, who also receive a monthly allowance from their benefactor, the organisation said. The Japanese suitor, believed to be a former tourist visiting the temples, also gives the families gifts such as motorbikes and houses, and has spent $ 300,000 on his wives since his arrival, authorities said. |
Atlantis launch delayed CAPE CANAVERAL, Jan 16 (Reuters) — NASA has decided it would delay this week’s planned launch of space shuttle Atlantis and the laboratory module it was supposed to deliver to the International Space Station until February.
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