Carlos Couto`s Portugal Pavilion wins prize Page 3

Transcription

®
13
Wednesday
July 2011
196th day of the year in the
Gregorian calendar
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Administrator Kowie Geldenhuys • Director Rogério Beltrão Coelho • Number 1356
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Photo by Joaquim de Sousa
UNESCO slams Macau
for lack of
urban planning
MACAU $5.00 • HK $7.50
Wednesday 13 July 2011
Page 2
Eurozone mulls summit on debt crisis
Leaders of the 17-nation eurozone may hold an
emergency summit on the spiralling debt crisis, although no decision has been made, EU president
Herman Van Rompuy said.
“No decision has been taken on a summit of the eurozone but it has not been excluded,” he told a news conference in Madrid yesterday following talks with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Diplomats in Brussels earlier told AFP the eurozone is
considering holding an emergency summit on Friday.
The summit plans highlight mounting concerns in
Europe that the debt crisis will force Greece to declare
default and contaminate Italy and Spain, the eurozone’s third and fourth largest economies.
Italian and Spanish borrowing costs soared, while
stock markets and the euro slumped yesterday despite a pledge from eurozone finance ministers the
night before that they were committed to ensuring
the euro area’s stability.
“I am fully aware of the current tensions in debt
markets,” said Van Rompuy. “But let me be very clear
that there is a very strong commitment at the highest level to do whatever is necessary to safeguard the
financial stability of the euro area.
MSAR has become a
drug transit point: PJ
Afghan president’s
brother assassinated
Carlos Couto’s Portugal
Pavilion wins prize
Page 3
1
Page 4
Page 7
macau Times
macau daily 澳門每日時報
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UNESCO slams Macau for
lack of urban planning
Photo by Joaquim de Sousa
by Alexandra Lages
and Tiago Azevedo
U
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee expressed
concerns at the ‘continuing inadequacy’ of the current
management system of Macau’s inscribed monuments
sures to be submitted at the
35th meeting of UNESCO
and suggested the government extend the historical
centre buffer zones in Macau
and work on overall long
term urban and conservation planning.
Yesterday, the Cultural Af-
Quoted by Portuguese-language channel Radio Macau,
he pointed out the IC would
strive to speed up the drafting of the legal instruments
required by UNESCO and
increase awareness. On the
other hand, he said that urban planning comes within
‘Cultural heritage is Macau’s
invisible wealth and everything
that can improve its protection
is always welcomed. Macau
heritage should be a
top-priority’: Nuno Jorge
fairs Bureau (IC) commented on the UNESCO’s decision. The bureau’s chief of
special projects, Boyce Lam,
said that local heritage is not
in danger of being axed from
the UNESCO list.
Director and Editor-in-Chief:
Rogério Beltrão Coelho ([email protected])
Senior Editor:
Cecília Jorge ([email protected])
Editor:
Tiago Azevedo ([email protected])
Designer Editor:
João Jorge Magalhães ([email protected])
Newsroom:
Alexandra Lages ([email protected]),
Natalie Leung ([email protected]),
Vitor Quintã ([email protected])
Designer:
Lina Franco
Secretary:
Yang Dongxiao ([email protected])
Times
®
NESCO’s
World
Heritage Committee urged Macau to
develop appropriate legal
and planning instruments
to protect its cultural heritage, incorporating its urban
planning.
The case was brought
to public attention by the
Portuguese-language newspaper Ponto Final. At this
year’s meeting that took
place last Thursday in Paris,
UNESCO recalled a decision
issued in 2009.
Macau is due to submit a
report on the state of property conservation and the
progress made in the implementation of legal and planning instruments, to be reviewed by the committee at
its 37th session in 2013.
Despite applauding the
initiatives taken by Macau
towards the development
of the urban plan, district
plans, and a proposed law
to safeguard Macau’s World
Heritage, the committee
“expresses its concerns at
the continuing inadequacy
of the current management
system, the buffer zone and
legal provisions, to protect
effectively the very important visual and functional
linkages between the inscribed monuments and the
wider urban land and seascape of Macau”.
UNESCO “reiterates its
request to the State Party
[Macau] to develop appropriate legal and planning
instruments comprising the
Urban Plan as developed
so far, and to submit to the
World Heritage Centre when
they are finalised, so that
they can be assessed by the
World Heritage Centre and
the Advisory Bodies”.
Last year, the vice president of the International
Council on Monuments and
Sites, Guo Zhan, had already warned that the world
heritage historical centre of
Macau was facing some difficulties. He pointed out the
urgent need for new mea-
the Land, Public Works
and Transport Bureau’s
(DSSOPT) responsibility.
Lam assured that Macau has
complied with recommendations stated by the international body in 2009. How-
ever, he stressed, “UNESCO
believes that more can be
done in terms of the Historic
Centre’s management”.
He added the IC had
brought along experts from
the DSSOPT to attend the
meeting in Paris, so they
could have better understanding of the goals of heritage conservation.
In the meantime, he continued, the international
body has applauded the
way Macau authorities have
solved the problem of the
construction of a high rise
near the Guia Lighthouse.
The building was expected
to reach a height of 126 metres and was lowered to 52.5
metres.
Following a public controversy in 2008, the government set a maximum height
limit of 90 metres around
the culturally protected area
of the Guia Lighthouse.
The buffer zone area was
also extended from two
square kilometres to 2.8
square kilometres, divided
into 11 different zones, each
with its own height limit depending on the proximity to
the historic lighthouse.
Architects with
the committee
Local architects and urban planners share different views and concerns over
the state of conservation of
Macau’s cultural heritage.
Former president of Macau
Architects Association, Nuno
Roque Jorge, stressed that
nothing is deemed enough
to protect the local cultural
heritage. However, he admitted it takes time to introduce the legal instruments
required by UNESCO.
“The Cultural heritage is
Macau’s invisible wealth and
everything that can improve
its protection is always welcome. Macau heritage should
be given a top-priority,” he
told the Macau Daily Times.
Real estate market speculation and other needs of
the rapid development of
Macau were some issues
mentioned by the architect.
“I understand some actions
take time, but I hope some
improvements can be introduced,” he said.
Urban planner Francisco
Vizeu Pinheiro is in line with
Jorge. However, he said the
development of urban planning must include the new
ation, Ben Leong Chong In,
suggests that Macau needs
to strike a balance between
heritage and the needs
of the city development.
He also believes that “the
government and Macau
residents will continue to
spend a lot of resources to
‘We should wait for planning of
the reclaimed areas to establish
a comprehensive urban plan’:
Francisco Vizeu Pinheiro
reclaimed areas.
“The urban planning is
on hold because of public
consultations, even though
I think it is good to take
people’s opinions into consideration. But we should
wait for the reclaimed areas
planning to establish a comprehensive urban planning,”
he pointed out.
Vizeu Pinheiro and Nuno
Jorge are more concerned
over non-listed heritage
conservation. Jorge calls on
authorities to look at “external circumstances” that
may have an impact on the
UNESCO-listed heritage.
“When I walk down the
streets between St. Paul’s
Ruins and Senado Square,
I see lots of traditional and
small businesses closed because of increasing commercial rental prices,” he said.
He suggested that not only
should heritage sites be protected, but also the experiences and life around it.
In addition, Vizeu Pinheiro
said Macau should also pay
attention to the heritage
that is not included on the
UNESCO list, such as the
old firecracker factory in
Taipa or some green areas in
Coloane.
“Those sites and areas are
endangered by real estate
development,” he warned.
‘Cultural mistake’
On the contrary, president
of Macau Architects Associ-
Contributors:
Albano Martins, Annabel Jackson, António Espadinha Soares, Eduardo Magalhães, Harry
Troy, Joseph Cheung, Juliet Risdon, Luciana Leitão, Manuel Cardoso (photos), Paulo
Coutinho, Sofia Jesus, Thomas Schmid (Thailand)
Special Contributors:
Ana Maria Correia, Andrew Found, Andrew Leong-Murphy, Angela Lam, Aurelio Porfiri, Chan
Shek Kiu, Cristina Tavares, Cyril Law, David Brookshaw, Diamantina Coimbra, Diana Massada,
Emilie Tran, Emmanuel Buga Dispo, Eric Sautedé, Geoffrey Churchill, Ian Alabanza, Imelu
Mordeno, Ivo Carneiro, Jacky Ho, Jenny Oliveros Lao, Joao Garrott M. Negreiros, Johnny B
Decatoria, José Alves, José I. Duarte, José Manuel Simões, Karen A. Tagulao, Keith Ip, Leanda Lee,
Michael Lio, Neena Thota, Olukayode Iwaloye, Oswaldo Veiga Jardim, Poon Kiu Tung, Ricardo
Rato, Richard Whitfield, Romulo Alegre, Ruan Du Toit Bester, Susan Pottier
News agencies:
AFP, Lusa, Project Syndicate, Xinhua.
protect heritage.”
Architect Carlos Couto, who
has been working in Macau
for over 30 years, said the
renovation of the city’s landscape is moving faster than
we could ever imagine.
“It’s good to see a city expanding, but this fast economic development also
brings up other issues, like
the lack of balance between
what’s part of the city’s heritage and what’s new,” he
said.
“We still have several areas
here in Macau which are part
of the old landscape. They
have a special charm and we
must protect that. Efforts
should be made to revitalise
these areas and better preserve them and keep their
charisma,” he added.
However,
protection
doesn’t mean zero building or a rejection of everything contemporary. “We
shouldn’t resort to construct
buildings that look old just
to fit into a certain neighbourhood. Doing that would
only give the idea of false
replicas and create a gap between what used to be contemporary and future architecture,” said Couto.
“That is a cultural mistake,”
he added.
“Today’s buildings will
be the old architecture in
the future,” he said, adding
that Macau needs to wisely
ponder about what projects
are “really good” for these
older districts.
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2
Times macau
Carlos Couto’s Portugal
Pavilion wins prize
L
ocal architect Carlos
Couto was one of the
winners of the Prémios Constuir 2011 on Monday,
which annually distinguishes
projects, personalities and
companies in Portugal that
stood out the previous year.
Couto’s design for Portugal’s
Pavilion at Expo Shanghai
2010 won the Architectural
prize for ‘Best Public Project’
competing against six others.
“It was an award for a project that had a lot of success,”
said Couto, adding that the
prize was for the entire team
of 12 architects, and also the
engineering team.
“It was an experience of a
life time,” he added.
“It’s not often that an architect has the possibility to
idealise a project for a world
expo. I got that opportunity
with the Expo Shanghai and
it was perhaps one of the
most important things I’ve
done in my 35 years of professional work.”
The Portugal Pavilion was
one of the favourites at Expo
2010 Shanghai, especially
as the exterior curtain walls
and interior attached veneers of the pavilion were all
decorated by walls of cork,
a Portuguese-sourced, recyclable and environmentally
friendly material.
At night, the angular panels
of the Portugal Pavilion were
illuminated with bright lights,
giving it a futuristic look.
“The use of cork was probably the best option we
made,” said Couto. “Many
people were lured into the
pavilion because they were
fascinated not only by the
texture, but also the smell of
the cork,” he added.
It also gave the architect
some stories to tell. “In the
first days of the event we
had to replace more than
400 panels because people
would touch and scratch
them. We were going mad,”
he told Macau Daily Times.
Government may recall
five blocks of idle land
The lessees of five parcels
of land are currently subject
to hearing procedures and if
proved to have “unreasonably” delayed development
of the land will see the government reclaim the blocks
immediately, said director of
the Land, Public Works and
Transport Bureau (DSSOPT)
Jaime Carion.
In response to lawmaker
Chan Meng Kam’s interpellation, Carion said the
government reviewed 113
cases of land that have been
sitting idle since 2009, with
some caused by “changes
in city planning, lawsuits
or judicial transfer” which
caused delays in completion
schedules according to their
contracts.
He said aside from “special
situations”, other important
factors that could classify a
block of land as idle include
“whether the land concession had expired, the lessees
had long overdue premiums
and whether they had submitted the development
plans”.
Of the 113 cases, the
DSSOPT chief revealed that
48 may be held accountable
for the delay in land development but more “in-depth
analysis” is required, which
should be completed within
the year.
The other 65 cases would
not suffer penalties as delays
were due to “special situations” such as “changes in
land concession contracts
or incomplete approval of
building plans, lawsuits or
city planning”, Carion pointed out.
He said among the 48 cases, the Chief Executive had
issued dispatches to begin
hearing procedures of five
land parcels. If it’s proven
that lessees had prolonged
the land use “seriously and
unreasonably”, the government will reclaim the land in
line with the law.
However, the official did
not disclose when the hearings would be completed
and where the five blocks are
located.
Carion said in order to prevent cases such as these a
measure was introduced in
April last year covering land
concession and the maxi-
mum fine was raised from
MOP 900,000 to up to 15
percent of land premiums.
Land premium calculation
methods are also going to be
revised and will take into account inflation, building use,
construction cost, property
value and location, and the
cost of financing.
On the other hand, the
cross-departmental
work
group yesterday reclaimed
1,000 square metres of land
in Hac Sa Village which was
illegally occupied by people
using it as a fish pond.
The DSSOPT said they informed the occupant earlier
this year to vacate the area
but neither a reply nor an
appeal was received so they
believed the area to be vacated.
With the land nearby
that was previously taken
back, the bureau has now
reclaimed 21,800 square
metres of illegally occupied
land in Hac Sa Village.
Since 2009, the government has taken back 30
blocks of land, with a total area of 154,200 square
metres.
3
But that changed some
days after the opening of
the exhibition. “We decided
to leave it as it was instead
of replacing every panel and
in fact we enjoyed seeing
people so curious. Once, we
even found an old woman
with an entire panel on her
hands,” the architect said.
The idea to use cork was
there from the start. The cork
oak is native to the Mediterranean region and two-thirds
of the world’s cork supply
comes from Portugal and
Spain, where the cork oak is
cultivated extensively.
“We had to show a product
that is essential to our [Portuguese] culture. It [the cork]
can have several usages and I
think we did a good job showing that,” said Couto.
The architect believes that
the relationship with the client was also the best he had
experienced. “Probably because the person in charge of
the Portuguese representation
was also an architect it was
very easy to deal with. Nothing was done without previously talking with me, and
that is always very important
for any architect,” he said.
Portugal’s Pavilion was bestowed the ‘Design Award’ by
the International Exhibition
Bureau, which assessed the
facade and exterior decora-
®
Local architect Carlos Couto with Christiana Ieong Pou
Yee, who headed the office for the Preparation of Macau’s
Participation in the Shanghai Expo (File photo: 2010)
tion of the pavilion, the architectural design, construction
techniques and their relationship to the theme of Expo 2010
– ‘Better City, Better Life’.
The participation in Expo
Shanghai 2010 also had a
special meaning for the local architect. “It is in China,
where I live, and it represented Portugal, my country.
So, all the elements that I
needed were there,” he said.
T.A.
Most opinions support
Small Taipa Hill construction
by Natalie Leung
The opinions gathered from local people
and associations concerning the construction of six high-rise towers on the Small Taipa
Hill should be summarised and released to
the public next week, said an official of the
Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau
(DSSOPT) yesterday.
Of the 880 valid opinions collected between
late May and mid-June, head of the urban
planning department of the DSSOPT, Lao
Iong, disclosed that about 67 percent or 587
were in favour of the second phase of development of Lisboa Gardens, while only 242 were
against the project.
In addition, he said 40 had expressed their
thoughts on the construction, but did not state
clearly whether they supported and opposed it,
and another 11 were comments that had no direct relation to the theme of the consultation.
Nevertheless, Lao stressed that the higher
number of supporters did not necessarily
mean the Lisboa Gardens developer, ‘Kai Fai’
Building Investment, will be permitted to
change the development plan.
“The most important thing is to analyse the
rationale behind the supporting and opposing
views,” he told reporters.
In late May the developer presented the proposal to the Advisory Group for Land Development in the hope to obtain approval from the
government to build six additional residential
towers, standing 154 metres or 139 metres
above sea level, in place of the original con-
struction plan for villas and a four-star hotel.
Meanwhile, Lao said the public views mainly
focus on “ecological protection, environmental conservation, protection of public interest,
city planning, meeting the market demand
and damage to landscape”.
The official also said the DSSOPT is considering whether or not to release the views of relative government departments at a later time.
However, he added that when the government will make their final decision could not
be predicted.
Secretary for Transport and Public Works
Lau Si Io told reporters recently that the Lisboa Gardens construction was “not an emergency project” and therefore the government
would review the application based on “general procedures”.
On the other hand, the New Macau Association met Lao at the DSSOPT premises yesterday, as the association held doubt about the
destination of the 1,751 public opinions submitted, if the bureau claimed that they only
have 880 opinions in hand.
Lao responded that the bureau counted the
batch of 1,751 opinions as “one opinion”, but reiterated that the government “respects each person’s view and has analysed them one by one”.
He said a majority of 1,684 opinions called for
a halt to the project as well as calling for the government to recall the land from the developer.
Yet, lawmaker Chan Wai Chi said he “absolutely cannot accept” how the bureau has treated the public opinions, criticising the method
as “unscientific, unreasonable and unfair”.
Macau Times
Police suicides caused
by ‘personal factors’
The five separate suicide incidents of public security
officers this year had “nothing to do” with work stress or
gambling, said secretary for Security Cheong Kuoc Vá.
Since February four Public Security Police and Customs officers have committed suicide.
The secretary told reporters yesterday he believed the
incidents were not caused by work pressure or gambling,
but “personal factors”, according to TDM news.
He said there is an internal mechanism within the security forces to deal with officers with suicidal tendencies and they are supported by counsellors.
If police officers are not happy with their current situations, the secretary said they can also apply to change
to other posts.
Nevertheless, he said that security forces will increase
counselling and related services as well as try to “reduce
work stress on police officers” in the future.
He added that 2,000 police officers have participated
in the anti-stress seminars organised by the force since
early this year.
Agreement to
prevent tax evasion
Australia has become the latest partner to sign an
agreement with Macau that will assist both governments
in preventing offshore tax avoidance and evasion.
The Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) was
signed yesterday in the territory by secretary for Economy
and Finance, Francis Tam Pak Yuen, and Consul-General
of Australia for Hong Kong and Macau, Les Luck.
Australia is the 12th jurisdiction to have signed such
an agreement with Macau. The SAR Government had
signed treaties that link the territory to Denmark, including the autonomous territories of Faroe Islands and
Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden in
May this year.
This agreement provides a legal basis for Australia and
Macau to exchange taxpayer information.
“The signing of this agreement demonstrates the commitment of Macau to international tax standards and is
indicative of the progress that is being made worldwide
to improve transparency in the financial system and
prevent offshore tax avoidance and evasion,” said Luck.
“Macau has signed at least 12 agreements with other
countries or regions, which is the minimum necessary
to meet the international standards of transparency and
exchange of tax information, thereby demonstrating
that the SAR Government has been striving to increase
international cooperation in tax matters,” the government said in a statement.
The tax treaty will provide authorities on both sides
with access to information about the capital dispositions and incomes of citizens with tax arrears and could
reveal assets and earnings not declared at home.
“Australia recognises Macau’s commitment to operating financial regulatory systems that meet the highest
international standards in order to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other financial crimes,”
said Australia’s Consul General.
The TIEA that was signed yesterday is a further step
in the global effort to establish an international financial system based on co-operation between countries,
transparency and effective exchange of information on
tax matters, all of which strengthen stability and the integrity of tax systems.
Since the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
meeting two years ago that almost had Macau labelled
as a tax haven prior to Chinese government intervention, the SAR Government has made a significant effort
to improve the transparency of the system to demonstrate its willingness to cooperate with its tax treaty
partners in combating tax avoidance or evasion.
“Australia values the strong bilateral relationship
with Macau, and looks forward to developing this relationship further through the signing of this agreement,” said Luck.
The agreement will become active when the relevant
domestic requirements have been completed in both
Australia and Macau.
T.A.
®
Macau now a drug
transit point: PJ
M
acau has become
a transit point for
international drug
trafficking, warned director
of the Judiciary Police (PJ)
Wong Sio Chak yesterday.
Speaking at the award ceremony of the 51st anniversary of the PJ, Wong disclosed
that in spite of drug offence
numbers remaining steady,
the amount of illicit drugs
seized at the Macau International Airport and the rapid
changes in the means of
drug trafficking showed that
“Macau has already become
a transit point for international drug trafficking”.
The situation deserves special concern and immediate
countermeasures, he added.
Macau’s position as gateway to mainland China along
with the increasing number
of budget airline flights, had
already raised concerns that
the territory may be used as
a transit point for drug trafficking. Smuggling routes
that originate in the Golden
Crescent, primarily Afghanistan, the largest opium producer in the world, may increase to include Macau.
The PJ handled 1,627 drug
related cases between 2000
and the end of March 2011.
The majority of the seizures
were heroin with a street
value totalling more than
MOP 58 million.
Last year alone, 191 drug
offences were detected, according to official figures,
with most cases being drug
trafficking. The PJ also reported 191 arrests, the highest number of drug-related
cases since 2001. Between
June 2010 and May 2011,
there were 99 instances of
drug trafficking.
Early this year the PJ had
acknowledged that there had
The director of the Judiciary Police Wong Sio Chak vowed yesterday to reinforce inspection at
various borders to fight international drug trafficking that is using Macau as a transit point
been “an upward trend since
the first ever case of drug
smuggling by means of internal concealment was intercepted in Macau in 2006”.
Thus, the director said the
PJ will reinforce inspection
at various borders and be
equipped with “advanced
drug-detection devices”. The
police force will also increase
monitoring and raids at casinos and encourage the public to report drug crimes.
Furthermore, Wong said
that the PJ will strengthen intelligence exchanges further
with other countries and regions, especially concerning
cross-border crimes, the latest trend of modus operandi
and even terrorist activities,
to implement effective operations to prevent and crack
down on drug offences.
On the other hand, between
June 2010 and May 2011,
the PJ received 10,150 new
cases, down 4.1 percent over
the same period between
mid-2009 and mid-2010.
Wong said there was 1 murder, 2 kidnappings, 25 ‘deprivation of one’s freedom of
movement’, 24 cases of extortion, 34 arson cases, 158
loan-sharking for gambling
purposes, 6 crime syndicates,
1,689 thefts as well as 146 robbery cases during the period.
Compared with the preceding 12 months, the PJ
chief said cases of murder
dropped significantly by
66.7 percent, extortion decreased 36.8 percent and
robbery also dropped down
29.5 percent.
There was a “notable increase” in ‘deprivation of
one’s freedom of movement’,
theft and also computer
crime, he added.
In addition, Wong said the
renovation of the new PJ
headquarters building, in the
old premises of the Central
Government Liaison Office,
is expected to be completed
at the end of 2012 and the
police force can then move
to a more spacious office
area in early 2013. N.L./T.A.
China pleased with SAR offices in Taipei
Spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, Yang
Yi said last week that the setting up
of offices in Hong Kong, Taiwan and
Macau was a “major event” and another “achievement” resulting from
improved Cross-Strait relations.
The Hong Kong and Macau Governments announced on July 4 that they
would respectively open an office in
Taipei to promote economic, trade
and cultural ties with Taiwan.
Taiwan at the same time also announced that its offices in the two
SARs would both be renamed as the
Taipei Economic and Cultural Office.
Yang Yi told the Central News Agency that it was a “major event” in the
development of Taiwan-Hong Kong-
4
Macau relations and also another
“result” of the “improved CrossStrait relations”.
He said in recent years the Hong
Kong and Macau Governments have
“actively promoted” exchanges between people of the three places.
He also said the offices represented
a “positive meaning” in enhancing
the “welfare and interactions” of the
people in the three areas.
The decision to rename Taipei’s
hub in both SARs is a sign of a warming of relations between Beijing and
Taipei, said Joseph Cheng, a professor of political science at Hong Kong
City University, quoted by CNN.
Contact between China and Taiwan has historically been defined
by instability and limited diplomatic
communication. But relations began
improving after the 2008 election of
current Taiwan President, Ma Yingjeou, whose policies have been largely friendly toward mainland China.
The Macau Economic, Trade and
Cultural Office in Taipei is expected
to open its doors in late 2011 or early
2012.
It will be a multi-functional office,
providing assistance to residents of
the MSAR working and studying in
Taipei, and act as a document certification service and provide support
in urgent situations.
The office will also promote longterm co-operation and exchanges
between Macau and Taiwan in several economic areas, from trade to
cultural and creative industries.
Times
5
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opinion Times
®
The Fall of the House of Murdoch
D
by Jonathan Schell
‘The Murdochs call
News Corporation a
journalistic enterprise.
In fact, it is, first,
an entertainment
company, with the bulk
of its revenue coming
from its film and
television holdings.
Second, and more
importantly, it is a
propaganda machine
for right-wing causes
and political figures’
‘In Britain, News
Corporation has
been creating a sort
of state unto itself by
corrupting the police,
assuming police
powers of surveillance,
and intimidating
politicians into looking
the other way […]’
uring the four decades since the Watergate affair engulfed US President Richard Nixon, politicians have repeatedly
ignored the scandal’s main lesson: the cover-up
is worse than the crime. Like Nixon, they have
paid a higher price for concealing their misdeeds
than they would have for the misdeeds alone.
Now, for once, comes a scandal that breaks
that rule: the United Kingdom’s phone-hacking
affair, which has shaken British politics to its
foundations. Over the past decade, the tabloid
newspaper The News of the World, owned by
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, targeted
4,000 people’s voicemail. The list includes not
only royalty, celebrities, and other VIPs, but also
the families of servicemen killed in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and those of victims of the July 2005
terrorist attack in London.
It all unraveled when The Guardian reported
that the tabloid had hacked into the voicemail of
missing 13-year-old Milly Dowler, apparently in
the hope of obtaining some private expressions
of family members’ grief or desperation that it
could splash on its front page. When the girl’s
murdered body was found six months later, the
family and the police thought she might still be
alive, because The News of the World’s operatives were deleting messages when her phone’s
mailbox became full. (According to Scotland
Yard, Murdoch hacks reportedly bribed midlevel police officers to supply information as
well.)
In the extensive annals of eavesdropping, all
of this is something new. Not even Stalin wiretapped the dead.
A cover-up ensued. James Murdoch, Rupert’s
son and Chairman and Chief Executive of News
Corporation’s European and Asian operations,
authorized a secret payment of £1 million (USD
1.6 million) to buy the silence of hacking victims. Millions of in-house emails reportedly
have been destroyed. Still, it seems safe to say
that the peculiarly repellant inhumanity of the
original deeds will remain more shocking than
the details of this or any other cover-up.
Even so, the political consequences of the
phone-hacking scandal will depend on far more
than the outcome of the official investigations
now underway in Britain. Above all, the scandal’s impact will depend on how governments and citizens assess what News
Corporation really is.
The Murdochs call News Corporation
a journalistic enterprise. In fact, it is,
first, an entertainment company, with
the bulk of its revenue coming from
its film and television holdings. Second, and
more importantly, it is a propaganda machine
for right-wing causes and political figures.
This is News Corporation’s main face in the
US, in the form of Fox News, whose hallmark
has been relentless propagation of right-wing
ideology. Whereas political propaganda had
once been the domain of governments and political parties, Fox News is formally independent of both – though it overwhelmingly serves
the interests of America’s Republican Party.
In Britain, News Corporation has been creating a sort of state unto itself by corrupting the
police, assuming police powers of surveillance,
and intimidating politicians into looking the
other way. In the US, it has behaved similarly,
using corporate media power to breathe life
into a stand-alone political organization, the
Tea Party.
All of this is far removed from what a journalistic organization is supposed to do. Journalism’s
essential role in a democracy is to enable people
to fulfill their roles as citizens by providing information about government, other powerful institutions, civil movements, international events,
and so on. But News Corporation replaces such
journalism with titillation and gossip, as it did
when it took over the 168-year-old News of the
World and turned it into a tabloid in 1984, and
with partisan campaigns, as it did when it created Fox News in 1996.
Not surprisingly, at Fox News, as at many other News Corporation outlets, editorial independence is sacrificed to iron-fisted centralized control. News and commentary are mingled in an
uninterrupted stream of political campaigning.
Ideology trumps factuality. And major Republican figures, including possible contenders for
the party’s presidential nomination, are hired
as “commentators.” Indeed, its specific genius
has been to turn propaganda into a popular and
financial success.
Given The News of the World’s profitability, no
one should be surprised if the Murdochs have
been replicating their sunken British flagship’s
reprehensible behavior elsewhere. But, whatever else is revealed, the UK phone-hacking scandal is of a piece with the Murdochs’ transformation of news into propaganda: both reflect an
assault on democracy’s essential walls
of separation between media, the
state, and political parties. The
– Jonathan Schell is
a Fellow at The Nation
Institute and is a visiting
fellow at Yale University.
He is the author of The
Seventh Decade: The
New Shape of Nuclear
Danger
6
Murdochs are fusing these entities into a single
unaccountable power that, as we see in Britain
today, lacks any restraint or scruple.
That effort should compel us to confront an
uncomfortable reality underlying both the British phone-hacking scandal, with its penumbra
of appalling cruelty and wanton corruption, and
Fox News, America’s most popular news channel: too many people want what the News Corporation has been offering. And what too many
people want can be dangerous to a civilized,
law-based society.
To glimpse just how dangerous, consider Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s
MediaSet conglomerate has seduced broad
swathes of the electorate since the 1980’s with
a Murdoch-like combination of insipid variety
shows and partisan political theater. When Italy’s postwar party system collapsed in the early
1990’s, Berlusconi was able to establish his own
political party, win power, and, over the course
of three governments, bend laws and government institutions to serve his business and personal interests.
The News Corporation seems determined to
take Britain and the US down a similar path.
But now, at least in Britain, the political class
is in revolt. Prime Minister David Cameron –
who previously cultivated close ties with News
Corporation leaders, even employing as his
press secretary The News of the World’s former
editor, who was recently arrested for his role
in the scandal – called the phone hacking “disgusting.” Meanwhile, Labour leaders, who had
also sought the Murdochs’ favor, have vowed to
block News Corporation’s bid for full ownership
of Britain’s largest pay-television broadcaster.
Whether the rebellion will jump across the Atlantic remains to be seen.
©: Project Syndicate/MDTimes, 2011
The chief executive of publisher News
International and a former editor of
the British tabloid News of the World,
Rebekah Brooks (R)
Times china
Warehouse fire kills 12
in Wuhan, 8 rescued
A
fierce blaze ripped
through a warehouse
in central China yesterday killing at least 12
people who were trapped
inside, state media and the
local fire brigade said.
Scores of people managed
to flee the building after the
fire broke out at an industrial park in Hubei province’s Wuhan city, but some
remained stuck inside, the
official Xinhua news agency
said.
A spokesman for the city’s
fire brigade, who refused to
be named, told AFP the fire
had now been put out. “At
present, 12 people have died
and the reason for the blaze
is still under investigation,”
he said.
Firefighters rescued eight
people from the blaze,
which tore through more
than 1,000 square metres
(10,760 square feet) of the
warehouse, the Xinhua report said.
Deadly blazes are common
in China and are typically
The building that caught fire in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province
blamed on lax observation
and enforcement of firesafety measures.
Anxious to quell public
anger over repeated fire disasters, China’s government
routinely orders nationwide
safety crackdowns after particularly deadly blazes, but
such incidents continue to
occur.
In April, 17 poor migrants
died when a fire swept
through an illegally constructed building in Beijing.
Last November, a fire engulfed a high-rise apartment
building in Shanghai, leav-
ing 58 people dead.
A preliminary investigation blamed that inferno on
careless work by unlicensed
welders who ignited nylon
netting swathing the building, which was being renovated to improve energy efficiency.
Beijing pledges support for Pakistan
China pledged its support for close
ally Pakistan yesterday, after the United States announced it would suspend
USD 800 million worth of security aid
to Islamabad.
“Pakistan is an important country in
South Asia. The stability and development of Pakistan is closely connected
with the peace and stability of South
Asia,” foreign ministry spokesman
Hong Lei told reporters in Beijing.
“China has always provided assistance to Pakistan, helping it improve
people’s livelihood and realise the sustainable development of its economy
and society. China will continue to do
so in the future.”
US President Barack Obama’s chief
of staff, William Daley, announced
in a television interview on Sunday
that the United States had decided to
withhold almost a third of its annual
USD 2.7 billion security assistance to
Islamabad.
The move has plunged relations between Islamabad and Washington – al-
ready rocky after US commandos killed
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in
May on Pakistani soil – to a new low.
But it was welcomed by India, which
has long accused Pakistan of providing shelter to militant groups and has
pushed the global community – the
United States in particular – to censure
Islamabad.
China, however, is one of Pakistan’s
closest allies and is also its main arms
supplier – a situation that India has
also expressed concern about.
World Expo China Pavilion reopens
Visitors took the escalator to enter the China Pavilion of Shanghai World Expo yesterday. The China Pavilion will
reopen for three months, from yesterday to October 9th. The price for entry has been set at 20 yuan (about 3 USD)
but people who can enjoy discount can get a preferential ticket at 15 yuan
7
®
Six jailed over riots
in industrial hub
China has jailed six people over riots that erupted last month in the nation’s southern industrial
heartland, state media said yesterday.
The unrest in southern Guangdong province
broke out on June 11 after rumours spread that
police had beaten a street hawker to death and
manhandled his pregnant wife.
Television images at the time showed hundreds
of police officers and armoured vehicles deployed
on the streets, with people hurling bricks at local
officials, vandalising ATMs and police posts.
A court in Guangdong handed down prison terms
ranging from nine months to three years and six
months, the official Guangzhou Daily said.
The violence was just one incident among a recent
bout of unrest. Earlier in June, hundreds of people
battled police and destroyed cars in Guangdong
after a factory worker was wounded in a knife attack over a wage row.
And in late May, thousands of ethnic Mongols protested in northern China for several days after the killing
of a herder laid bare simmering anger in the region.
According to the report, those sentenced on Monday had all taken part in the riots. Some had burnt
or damaged police cars and thrown rocks at vehicles and people. One of them bit a policeman in
the stomach when he was detained.
Neither the court nor the local government were
available for comment.
Last month, police said they had detained a person suspected of spreading rumours on the Internet that triggered the clashes.
They said the suspect – surnamed Chen – had confessed to publishing false information online. But it
was unclear whether Chen had been sentenced yet.
Guangdong seeks to
ease ‘one-child’ policy
Authorities in China’s most populous province have
asked Beijing to ease the one-child policy, a government official said yesterday, amid growing concerns
over gender imbalances and an ageing population.
Guangdong, in southern China, wants to launch a
pilot program to allow some families to have two
children, an official with the Guangdong Population and Family Planning Commission told AFP.
Local authorities have submitted the proposal – which
would allow couples where one of the adults is an only
child to have a second baby – to central government,
the official, who declined to be named, said.
“To allow the new policy will have little overall
impact on population growth,” Guangdong family planning chief Zhang Feng was quoted by the
Southern Metropolis Daily as saying Monday.
Until now, those exempt from the law introduced in
1979 include ethnic minorities, farmers whose first child
is a girl and couples where both are only children.
Policy violations usually result in hefty fines and a
cut back in social services.
But the one-child law is facing increasing scrutiny.
He Yafu, an expert who is in close contact with
some of China’s official demographers, told AFP
last year that officials planned to launch similar pilot projects in five provinces aimed at evaluating
the effects of relaxed rules.
The would-be test provinces were Heilongjiang,
Jilin and Liaoning in the northeast, Jiangsu and
Zhejiang in the east.
“Official demographers say that those five provinces have basically been determined as the first
pilot provinces, and over the next five years or so
it will spread to the whole of China,” He said.
If approved, the Guangdong trial would help alleviate problems caused by the policy in the world’s
most populous country of more than 1.3 billion,
such as an ageing population that is putting pressure on the nation’s economy.
Critics blame the policy for creating gender imbalances, where sex-specific abortions remain common. Female infanticide and the abandoning of
baby girls have also been reported.
advertisementTimes
®
Certified
Public Accountant
畢世華
Luiz F. Da Silva Pedruco
( Registered Auditor since 1983 )
Bach. Fin. Admin. U.N.E (Aust.)Fellow of H.K.I.C.P.A., CPA (Aust.)
Expat from Australia. Over 200-years Family history in Macau
[email protected]
Address: No. 665 Av. da Praia Grande . Edif. Great Will, 14th “B” Macau
Tel: 28 355 388
Website: www.cpamacao.com
8
Times asia-pacific
®
One dead
in Indonesia Islamic
school blast
Malaysian riot police fire hit protesters with tear gas during the Bersih 2.0 demonstration
in Kuala Lumpur, on Saturday
Malaysian activists call
for royal inquiry
M
alaysian activists
who staged a mass
rally for poll reforms called yesterday for a
royal probe into the electoral
system after the clampdown
on their weekend protest.
Bersih 2.0, a coalition of
non-governmental organisations, said it would not
abandon its campaign, with
Prime Minister Najib Razak
widely expected to call elections by early next year.
The opposition say voting
favours the Barisan Nasional coalition, who have ruled
Malaysia for half a century but saw their majority
slashed in the previous gen-
eral election, in 2008.
“The work for Bersih 2.0
continues. We believe that
the best way forward is for
the setting-up of a royal
commission of inquiry. We
have asked for that,” Bersih
head Ambiga Sreenevasan
told reporters.
“The idea is for them to
look at the entire electoral
system, look at an overhaul
of the system... It’s clearly
the wish of the people that
we move forward with the
agenda for electoral reform,”
she said.
She added the commission
should consist of experts
“acceptable to the people”
to study Bersih’s demands,
such as allowing Malaysians
abroad to vote and introducing indelible ink to prevent
voters from casting multiple
ballots.
Backed by opposition parties, Bersih mobilised tens
of thousands of people to
take the streets in the capital
Kuala Lumpur on Saturday
in the country’s biggest rally
in four years.
Police, which had declared
the protest illegal, used tear
gas and water cannon and
arrested more than 1,600
people.
A man also died when fleeing from tear gas, according
to his family, though police
say he was a bystander who
died of a heart attack.
Before the protest, the
Election Commission, which
is in charge of running all
polls, announced it would
fingerprint voters using a
biometric system to address
activists’ concerns of people
voting more than once.
But few details were given
and it is still unclear how
this could be implemented.
Ambiga said Bersih would
not be holding another rally
“immediately” and that it
wanted to engage the government and other parties
to bring about reform.
Indian PM criticised over cautious reshuffle
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh came under renewed fire after
he failed yesterday to make sweeping
changes to his cabinet in a reshuffle
that the opposition branded an “aimless rotation”.
Halfway through its second term,
the administration led by Singh’s Congress party has suffered from months
of negatives headlines over corruption
scandals, stubbornly high inflation and
slowing economic growth.
The finance, home, defence and foreign affairs ministers all kept their jobs
in a limited shake-up of Singh’s top
team that had been aimed at combating accusations that the government
has lost momentum.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh
was the most high-profile mover as he was
promoted to the cabinet and transferred
to the rural development portfolio.
Parsa Venkateshwar Rao, an independent political analyst in New
Delhi, said the move was a missed
opportunity for Singh to fulfil his
vow to revive the government.
“This does not come through as an attempt to clean up the government’s image. They are practically routine changes,” he told AFP. “The prime minister
promised a major reshuffle, but that
hasn’t happened.”
Rao added however that Ramesh’s
promotion to the cabinet might “bring
some energy since he is a very pro-active minister.”
Last month, Singh, 78, rejected
criticism that he had become a “lame
duck” leader who had turned a blind
eye to a spate of corruption allegations, including a multi-billion-dollar telecom scandal.
The main opposition Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) dismissed the reshuffle as
an “aimless rotation” that fell far short
of public expectations.
“It clearly shows that the government
does not care about popular sentiment.
People expected significant changes
this time,” BJP spokesman Syed Shahnawaz Hussain told AFP.
Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh
9
A man was killed when a homemade bomb exploded in an Islamic boarding school in eastern Indonesia, which police say has links to
jailed radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.
“An improvised bomb exploded in one of the
school rooms on Monday at 1530,” local police spokesman Sudjoko told reporters, adding that the school’s treasurer Firdaus was
killed in the blast.
After the blast in West Nusa Tenggara province, hundreds of students armed with sharp
weapons blocked the school entrance, stopping police and soldiers entering to investigate the blast.
“They don’t want our presence there,” Sudjoko said.
National police spokesman Anton Bachrul
Alam said that 10 people were arrested outside the school premises on Monday.
Local media reported earlier that one of the
school’s leaders was arrested last year for
funding a militant training camp in Aceh province of Sumatra island, backed by the firebrand cleric Bashir.
One of the students late last month slashed
the neck of a police officer at the security post
with a knife, killing him, according to one report.
Indonesia has been rocked by a series of attacks by the regional terror network Jemaah
Islamiyah in recent years, including the 2002
Bali bombings, which killed 202 people.
Radioactive
ash in waste plants
near Tokyo
Japanese waste incineration plants near Tokyo
have found high levels of radiation in ash, and
officials said yesterday it may be from garden
waste contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear
disaster.
The radioactive caesium was detected in plants
in Kashiwa city in Chiba prefecture, northeast
of Tokyo and about 200 kilometres (120 miles)
from the plant that has leaked radiation since the
March 11 quake and tsunami.
Officials stressed that the radioactive ash collected in late June and early July, at concentrations of up to 70,800 becquerels per kilogramme,
was safely contained within the plant and posed
no health risk to the community.
The level is far higher than the government’s
8,000-becquerel per kilogramme limit, above
which waste dumps must keep such ash in storage, and it presents authorities with the question
of what to do with it.
Authorities suspect the caesium may be from
garden waste, such as tree branches and grass
cuttings, that has been burnt in the facility.
Kashiwa city official Kiyoshi Nakamura told AFP:
“Some people are believed to have cut plants
and mown their lawns because of fear of radioactive contamination, and that waste was apparently brought to the plant.”
“The radioactive ash is stored inside the plant, so
the radiation has not been leaked into the environment,” he said.
However, another city official, Masaki Orihara,
warned that “we may run out of space to store
the ash in about 55 days. There may be no other
way but to end up suspending incinerators in the
worst case.”
features Times
F
®
Kenya camel’s milk set for boo
or the tattered-clothed
young men in this remote
community, milking a camel’s stubby udders at sunrise is not
a novelty, but a daily chore to get
milk valued by their tribe for generations.
But camel’s milk, long-cherished
by the Cushite people of central Kenya, is now enjoying a renaissance
in the capital Nairobi and could,
some say, become an internationally coveted health food product
worth 10 billion dollars a year.
“Camels are better than cows because they can survive when there
is drought, but the cows cannot, so
I can make a profit even during dry
season,” said Halima Hussein, 45,
whose 84-strong flock makes her a
local camel-mogul.
“I’m going to sell to sell some
of my cows to buy more camels,”
added Hussein, whose family also
owns 120 cows.
This arid region in central Kenya, like much of northeast Africa,
has in recent years been hit with
less predictable and more intense
droughts, hindering cow’s milk
production and boosting the value
of camels.
In Isiolo, some 280 kilometres
(175 miles) north of Nairobi, Hussein and the 63 other women in
her local cooperative currently
send between 3,000 to 5,000 litres
(quarts) of camel’s milk a day to
markets in Nairobi’s Eastleigh
neighbourhood.
Following this unprecedented
demand, the Dutch development
organisation SNV, which helps the
women sell their milk in Nairobi,
has suggested opening a milk bar
in Isiolo, perhaps to introduce visitors to the unique flavours of camel-based diary.
The Somali, Oromo and Borana
tribes – all part of the Cushite
group – provide a reliable base of
customers at Nairobi’s hectic markets.
But some insist there is a chance
to turn this once ignored type of
milk into a high-end health food
product sought after on every continent.
“There is already a high demand
for camel milk in the developed
countries,” said Holger Marbach,
a German national who founded
Vital Camel Milk, which makes yo-
ghurt, ice cream and other camel’s
milk products.
Marbach said Vital Camel Milk
currently sells its products to supermarkets in Kenya, Latin America, South Africa and United Arab
Emirates, but could sell to more
lucrative markets if “administrative and political barriers” were
removed.
Leading food experts also agree
that camel’s milk has potentially
valuable properties.
“Camel milk is slightly saltier
than cow’s milk, three times as rich
in Vitamin C and is known to be
rich in iron, unsaturated fatty acids
and B vitamins,” according to the
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s website.
The Food and Agriculture Organi-
zation (FAO) says that with savvier
packaging and more investment,
camel’s milk could become a 10 billion dollar annual global industry.
Even though Starbucks has not yet
introduced a ‘camel chai latte,’ the
milk remains a hugely important
food source for a community regularly hit by devastating drought.
“I feed my 12 children on camel’s
milk,” said Safia Kulow, 40, who is
president of the Isiolo women’s cooperative.
Daniel Muggi, the official in
charge of Isiolo livestock at Kenya’s
Ministry of Agriculture, argues that
the milk’s nutritional value, and
the ability of camels to produce it
regardless of the whether, may enhance its popularity.
“Circumstances force people to
Blood feud cripples lives in Kosov
by Ismet Hajdari
O
utside the Neziri
family compound
in this Kosovo hamlet there is no sign of life,
not even a sound indicating
that 45 relatives with seven
children are holed up inside
afraid of a vendetta attack.
His eyes darting from side
to side, the head of the clan,
Haki Neziri, 77, emerged
cautiously from the
house to receive
AFP journalists.
“My family has not
been able
to go out for 17 months.
Men and women cannot go
to work on the field. Children cannot go to school,”
he complained bitterly.
The Neziris fear any one of
them could be shot by members of the rival Veseli family in an “honour killing”
to avenge a murder, in this
ethnic Albanian area that
broke away from Serbia in
2008.
The ancient Albanian
tradition of the blood feud
has forced the Neziri family – even the children –
to barricade
themselves
inside their
homes,
the only
place they
are
safe.
Under the
old
customs, a vendetta killing
10
of someone inside their own
home would bring shame
on the perpetrator.
The drama in Gracke,
set on the slopes
of the Nerodime
mountains some
50
kilometres
(31 miles) south
of the capital
Pristina, started
in February 2010
when an old dispute between the
two families culminated in the
killing of Brahim Veseli, 40.
Four Neziri brothers were
arrested and are currently
on trial for murder.
So-called “honour killings”
– known as gjakmarrja, the
Albanian law of vendetta
– have been deeply rooted
in local lore for centuries
as part of mediaeval tribal
laws known as the “Code of
Leke Dukagjini”.
The code, or “Kanun”, says
“if one man kills another,
a male member of the victim’s family must respond
in kind.”
Prominent human rights
activist Behxhet Shala described “gjakmarrja” as “a
relic of the past that was
used to settle disputes by
meting out justice by yourself” in stateless societies.
“It is an anomaly nowadays,” he said. “But it has
resurfaced as there is no
Times features
®
om times
change and non Cushite communities are considering camels because
of lessons learnt from the drought
and famine here,” he said.
“I’m not saying people should
abandon all the other types of milk,
but I am saying camel milk is the
saviour of the pastoralists during
the dry season.”
While they welcome the surge in
camel interest within Kenya, locals
in Isiolo sound anxious to look beyond the domestic market.
“In the future, we are thinking of
getting a camel milk factory,” said
56-year-old Adan Ali, the only male
member of the Isiolo cooperative.
“We think camel milk will be gold,
because we will start exporting to
the European Union,” he said.
AFP
vo
strong and functional rule
of law” in Kosovo, where the
EU rule of law mission (EULEX) is still monitoring and
mentoring authorities.
Other observers also said
such “honour killings” had
risen in recent years though
there are no official figures
available.
Under the code, drawn up
by an Albanian aristocrat
during the 14th-century
struggle against Ottoman
rule, a murderer’s family
can request assurances from
the victim’s family – in the
form of their word of honour known as “besa” – that
they will not be shot if they
step outside.
In the Neziris’ case, the
family of the dead man has
refused to make any such
pledge, even for children
aged seven to 14.
A camel herder of the Borana community milks a camel at dawn in Isiolo, 300 km north of Kenyan capital, Nairobi (Photo: June 9)
‘We are helpless’
“They did not give us
‘besa’,” said Haki’s 13-yearold grandson Arijan, who
eyed the strangers in his
home suspiciously. “I would
love to go to school, but I
cannot.”
His 10-year-old brother
Fatum,
bounding
with
pent-up energy, also wants
to return to school, “not to
take classes but to play with
friends.”
Despite repeated efforts by
influential locals, the Veseli
family has refused to exclude the children from the
feud.
“I went with local authorities more than five times to
the Veselis to try to mediate reconciliation and solve
the problem of my students.
They did even not accept
to talk about ‘besa’,” said
school principal Ejup Shabani.
Local police say they are
equally frustrated.
“We are helpless in the
fight against the ‘Kanun’
tradition as there is no offence we can prove,” officer
Agim Gashi told AFP. He
said when authorities have
contacted the Veseli family, they insist they are not
keeping the children from
attending school.
“Still, the kids are
afraid,” he said.
Shabani’s school has
tried to help by sending
teachers to the Neziri
household weekly so
the children do not
fall behind. Police also
escort the children to
school when they have to
take exams.
11
Under local rules the
principal should expel the
children for not attending
classes, but “we are breaking the law on purpose in
order not to endanger their
education.”
Shyqeri Neziri, 49 and father of two of the children,
said he understood the
anger of the victim’s family but begged to keep the
youngsters out of it.
“An evil happened. It is up
to the justice system to address it now. The harmed
family has to be compensated but without involving the
children. They have to go to
school,” he told AFP.
Fidan Veseli, the 20-yearold nephew of the murder
victim, said that for now the
prevailing view was that the
Veselis would not touch the
Neziris.
“Let’s see what the justice
will do,” he said, referring
to the court case – though
justice moves slowly in Kosovo and it was uncertain
when the trial would end.
The nephew would not explain why his family would
not agree to a pledge not to
harm the Neziri children.
As the oldest Neziri
brother, Shyqeri, with his
father, feels
the weight of responsibility
for getting the family out of
a situation with “no future”.
Blocked in their compound,
they have started selling off
property and cattle piece by
piece “to earn a living”.
The frustration shows on
Shyqeri’s face and the desperation in his words
“I will send word to them.
Let them chose the time and
place and I will go there.
“If it is a condition for my
family to get rid of ‘gjakmarrja’ let them kill me,” he
said. “They will be forgiven
by my family.”
AFP
(L) Arijan Neziri, 13,
(R) and his brother
Fatlum Neziri,
10, talk during an
interview at their
home
(R) Haki Neziri, 77,
at his house in the
village of Gracke
WORLD Times
Assange appeal British
extradition ruling
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange yesterday
started his appeal at the High Court in London against a ruling that he can be extradited
to Sweden to face allegations of rape.
Wearing a grey suit, blue tie, white shirt and
glasses, the 40-year-old Australian got out of
a black car and walked slowly into the court
building surrounded by a scrum of cameramen and journalists.
He refused to answer repeated questions on
the appeal, aimed at reversing a ruling by a
judge in February which rejected defence arguments that Assange would face an unfair
trial in Sweden.
A supporter yelled: “Keep fighting the American empire, Julian.” Other supporters including campaigning journalist John Pilger also
arrived at the court.
The hearing yesterday and today will take
place before two judges. The decision is expected to be deferred until a later date.
Even if the ruling goes against him, Assange’s
lawyers have signalled he is prepared for a
lengthy legal battle and could take his challenge all the way to the Supreme Court.
The former computer hacker has been living
under strict bail conditions, including wearing an electronic ankle tag and a curfew, at
a friend’s mansion in eastern England since
December.
He was arrested in December after two
Swedish women accused him of sexual assault, allegations that Assange denies, as
his whistleblowing website was in the process of releasing a huge cache of leaked US
diplomatic cables.
®
22 police hurt , tensions
high in Belfast violence
S
erious rioting erupted in Belfast injuring
22 officers, police
said, as tension mounted
before yesterday’s culmination of Northern Ireland’s
main Protestant marching
season.
Police used water cannon
and fired 51 plastic bullets to
try to disperse around 200
Catholic rioters in the Broadway area of mainly Catholic
west Belfast late Monday.
Rioters responded with a
hail of bricks and more than
40 petrol bombs.
A bus was hijacked and
driven at a police cordon
separating Catholic Nationalists from Protestant Loyalists around 200 metres
(yards) away, but crashed
before reaching the cordon.
Four of the 22 wounded
officers were taken to hospital. Their injuries were not
life-threatening, the Police
Service of Northern Ireland
(PSNI) said yesterday.
PSNI assistant chief constable Alistair Finlay said: “No
one wants to see disorder return to any part of Northern
Ireland. Such violence damages local infrastructure, it
sets back relationships and
leaves wounds which take
time to heal.
Orangemen march past a Nationalist area at the start of their Twelfth of July
celebrations in Belfast, Northern Ireland, yesterday
“We know it is a difficult
time for some communities
and we encourage everyone
with influence to keep talking, making their peaceful
voices heard and working
towards meaningful solutions and a peaceful summer.”
The
marching
season
comes to a climax later yesterday and marks the Battle
of the Boyne in 1690 when
king William III, a Protestant, defeated the Catholic
king James II, whom William had unseated two years
earlier.
Trouble first flared late
Monday when Protestants
began lighting bonfires, the
signal for the start of the
Twelfth, a day of celebrations during which tens of
thousands of “Orange Order” men are expected to
march.
“There is no other single
event that can produce
crowds like the Twelfth. It
is such a special day of religion, culture, music and
pageantry,” said Orange Order grand master Edward
Stevenson.
Northern Ireland saw
some of its worst sectarian
violence in years two weeks
ago, focused on a Catholic
enclave in east Belfast.
The 1998 “Good Friday”
peace accords largely ended
the cycle of sectarian bombings and shootings in the
province, part of the United
Kingdom, and paved the
way for a devolved, powersharing Northern Irish Assembly.
Around 3,500 people were
killed in decades of unrest
pitting Protestant Loyalists
who want the province to
remain part of the United
Kingdom against Catholic
Republicans who favour
joining the Irish Republic.
Former PM accuses Murdoch papers
of hiring criminals
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (C) arrives at the
High Court in central London
Gas bus blast kills 9
near Pakistan airport
Nine Pakistanis died yesterday when the
gas cylinder on their bus exploded on the
main road between the capital Islamabad
and the airport, officials said.
The van, carrying 15 passengers, was en
route from Islamabad to the satellite town of
Kalarsaydan, when it blew up on the busy
expressway.
“It was a cylinder blast. Nine people have
been killed and five are injured. Three women are also among the injured,” police official Faisal Memon told AFP.
TV footage showed the wreckage of the bus
and scattered burnt debris.
A large number of Pakistanis use compressed natural gas (CNG) to power private
and public vehicles as it is cheaper than the
petrol and diesel.
Former British prime minister Gordon Brown accused Rupert Murdoch’s
media empire yesterday of using criminals to obtain his private documents, as
lawmakers prepared to quiz police over
phone hacking.
In a major new twist in the row that
led to the closure of the Murdochowned News of the World, Brown accused its stablemate the Sunday Times
of using con tricks to obtain bank details and legal documents relating to a
flat he bought.
He also said he did not understand
how The Sun, another Murdoch paper,
obtained information that his son had
cystic fibrosis, adding that when the
tabloid splashed the news on its front
page in 2006 he was left “in tears”.
Brown said it was Rebekah Brooks
who called to tell him in 2006 that the
tabloid was breaking the story about
the illness of his son, who was then four
months old.
“I’ve never talked publicly about
Fraser’s condition. And obviously we
wanted that to be kept private for all
the obvious reasons,” said Brown,
who was finance minister from 1997
to 2007 and then Labour prime minister until 2010.
12
Gordon Brown : ‘genuinely shocked
to find that this happened because
of their links with known criminals,
hired by investigators who were
working with the Sunday Times’
(File photo)
“I think what happened pretty early
on in government was that the Sunday
Times appear to have got access to my
building society account, they got ac-
cess to my legal files,” Brown told the
BBC in an interview.
“But I’m shocked, I’m genuinely
shocked to find that this happened
because of their links with criminals,
known criminals who were undertaking this activity, hired by investigators
who were working with the Sunday
Times.”
His claims are the first to explicitly
drag in other Murdoch newspapers into
the long-running scandal over phone
hacking at the News of the World, and
threaten to further damage Murdoch’s
media interests.
They come as lawmakers prepared to
question senior police officers about
why their original investigation into
phone hacking at the News of the World
in 2006 failed to unearth the hoard of
allegations that have emerged in recent
months.
In the latest twist, it was reported that
Prince Charles and his wife Camilla had
their voicemails hacked.
Media reports also suggested that
police officers charged with protecting
members of the royal family had sold
their details to the News of the World,
and the tabloid’s owners knew about
this as early as 2007 but kept quiet.
Times WORLD
Afghan president’s
brother assassinated
A
fghan
President
Hamid Karzai’s younger brother, the government’s key powerbroker in the
south of the country, was assassinated yesterday, depriving NATO of a vital if controversial ally.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for killing Ahmed Wali
Karzai in his own home, while
the Kandahar provincial police
chief said he was shot dead by
the long-serving commander
of his family’s personal protection force.
The half-brother of the Afghan leader was for years a
deeply controversial figure,
dogged by allegations of unsavoury links to Afghanistan’s
lucrative opium trade and private security firms.
But his killing raises disturbing questions about possible
infiltration among those closest to the Karzai family and is
also a severe blow to NATO
and the Afghan leadership in
Kandahar, the heartland of the
Taliban insurgency.
The incident comes as NATO
troops start withdrawing from
the country and Western nations search for a political solution after a decade of war.
Kandahar police chief Abdul
Razeq identified the assassin as
Sardar Mohammad, the commander of a force of 200 bodyguards who had provided security for the younger Karzai’s
family for seven years.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid
Karzai (File photo: August 16, 2009)
Razeq said Mohammed had
for seven years been in charge
of security in the upmarket
neighbourhood of Bala Karz in
Kandahar city, where Karzai’s
family lived.
He said Mohammed showed
a letter to bodyguards at the
house saying he had “urgent”
business with Karzai, head of
the Kandahar provincial council, and was ushered into his
study alone.
“Moments later the bodyguards hear the sound of gunshots and when they enter the
room they find Ahmed Wali
Karzai shot in the head and
chest, and in a pool of blood,”
he said.
“The bodyguards riddle
Sardar with bullets. Ahmed
Wali Karzai died on the spot,”
he said, adding that besides
the assassin and his victim, no
one else died in the attack.
The police chief and an official at the hospital where
Karzai’s body was taken both
said he had been shot in the
head and the chest.
The assassination came just
before the Afghan leader received French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was on a
surprise visit to Afghanistan
®
China, Russia
invited to Libya talks
in Istanbul
where he announced that Paris would recall 1,000 soldiers
by the end of next year.
Interior ministry spokesman Seddiq Seddiqi said:
“One of the very important
figures in Afghanistan has
been martyred. We condemn this attack.”
Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa said the assassin
was a “trusted guy”.
“Every time Hamid Karzai
and Qayoum Karzai [his
brother] would come to Kandahar for a family visit, all the
security responsibility would
be given to Sardar Mohammad,” he said.
Razeq said Mohammad’s
personal bodyguards were
arrested after the attack and
security ramped up in Kandahar city, with roads around
Karzai’s house blocked.
American documents leaked
by Internet whistleblower
WikiLeaks painted the younger
Karzai as a corrupt drugs baron, lifting the lid on Western
thoughts long kept private.
The top US commander in
Afghanistan, General David
Petraeus, who steps down next
week before becoming head of
the CIA, condemned the killing and pledged the support of
NATO’s International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF).
The US embassy in Kabul
also condemned the assassination “in the strongest possible terms”.
Turkey has invited China and Russia to join for
the first time discussions on Libya as part of a
contact group of major powers, to convene this
week in Istanbul, a Turkish official said yesterday.
“Russia and China have been invited as permanent members of the UN Security Council.
We think they will participate but no information
has reached us so far on what level,” foreign
ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal told reporters.
The so-called International Contact Group on
Libya, scheduled to meet Friday in Istanbul, includes the countries participating in the NATOled campaign targeting Moamer Kadhafi’s regime and regional players.
Russia abstained from a vote on a Security
Council resolution in March that opened the
way for international involvement in Libya and
has since criticized the scale and intent of the
NATO-led strikes.
China, for his part, had maintained a policy of
non-interference in the conflict, but has appeared more involved recently and its officials
have met several times with Libyan opposition
representatives.
Along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the foreign ministers of Australia, Bahrain,
Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France,
Italy, Malta, Morocco, the Netherlands, Poland
and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have confirmed their participation in the Istanbul meeting, Unal said.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as well as the heads of the Arab
League, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Gulf Cooperation Council will
also attend, he added.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
has said that Libyan opposition appeals for
financial assistance will be discussed at the
gathering.
Egypt protesters call for mass march for change
Egyptian pro-democracy activists yesterday called from a mass
march in Cairo to push for political
change, a day after the prime minister offered concessions, which
were criticised as falling short.
The march is to leave from Tahrir
Square, epicentre of protests that
toppled president Hosni Mubarak in
February, at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT)
headed for the cabinet headquarters, activists said on Facebook.
The call came as assailants armed
with knives and sticks tried to attack protesters camped out in Tahrir Square, state television said.
“Thugs tried to force their way
into the square from four entrances, but were pushed back by
protesters,” state television said,
reporting that eight people were
lightly injured.
Protesters who first took to the
streets to demand Mubarak’s resignation have increasingly directed
their anger at the Supreme Council of
the Armed Forces, which took power
when the strongman was ousted.
The armed forces, which were
hailed as heroes at the start of the
January 25 uprising for not shooting
protesters, have come under fire for
using Mubarak-era tactics to stifle
dissent and maintain an absolute
and unchallenged grip on power.
On Monday, Sharaf ordered a government reshuffle within a week, as
part of a series of measures aimed
at placating protesters impatient
with Sharaf’s alleged weakness in
the face of the military junta.
The prime minister also set a deadline of July 15 for the dismissal of policemen accused of killing protesters
during the uprising, and called on
the judiciary to proceed with open
trials of former regime members.
His speech came as sit-ins continued in Cairo, Alexandria on the
Mediterranean coast and the canal
city of Suez, following nationwide
rallies last Friday to demand political change.
Among protesters’ key demands
are an end to military trials of civilians, the dismissal and prosecution
of police officers accused of murder and torture – before and after
the revolution – and open trials of
former regime officials.
Egypt’s press yesterday also reacted coldly to a series of concessions by Sharaf aimed at placating
protesters, amid mounting anger
over the pace of reforms.
“Tahrir Square rejects Sharaf’s
speech,” was the verdict from the
independent daily Al-Masry AlYoum, in reference to the Cairo
square which was the epicentre of
Egyptians wave their national flag as they gather during a sit-in at Tahrir square, Cairo, on Monday
protests against Mubarak.
“The vision is cloudy, where are
we heading?” asked the stateowned Al-Gomhouria, while “Tahrir calls for Sharaf’s resignation”
was the frontpage headline in the
independent Al-Shorouk.
A military source told AFP on
Monday that Sharaf’s speech had
13
been delayed several hours until
the military council approved its
final wording.
Sit-ins continue in Cairo, Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast
and the canal city of Suez, following nationwide rallies on Friday to
demand political change.
Hundreds camped out in Tahrir
Square, forming a picket line outside the Mugamma, a huge government complex housing Egypt’s
sprawling bureaucracy.
In Alexandria, hundreds vowed not
to budge from their sit-in in Qayed
Ibrahim Square, and hundreds more
packed into Al-Arbaeen Square in
Suez.
Infotainment Times
What’s On
®
Cinema
Cineteatro
This Day in History
Last murderess hanged in Great Britain
Room 1
Transformers - Dark of the moon
2:00/4:45/7:30/10:15pm
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie HuntingtonWhiteley and Tyrese Gibson
Director: Michael Bay
Language: English (Chinese subtitles)
Duration: 108 min
Linyi wood toys and Laizhou jade sculpture
Time: 12pm-7pm (Tuesdays to Fridays)
10am-7pm (Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays)
Until: July 31,2011
Venue: Lou Kau Mansion, No. 7, Travessa da Sé
Admission: Free
Telephone enquiries: (853) 8399 3399
Lady’s Night
Time: 8pm
Venue: Small Auditorium, Macau Cultural Centre, Av. Xian
Xing Hai s/n, NAPE
Admission: MOP25
Song of the Conqueror: Works by Zhuxi
The Autobots learn of a Cybertronian spacecraft hidden
on the Moon, and race against the Decepticons to reach
it and to learn its secrets
Room 2
Mr. Popper’s Penguins
2:30/4:30/7:30/9:30pm
Starring: Jim Carrey
Director: Mark Waters
Duration: 94 min
Room 3
Something Borrowed
2:30/7:30pm
Starring: Kate Hudson,
Ginnifer Goodwin
Director: Luke Greenfield
Duration: 112 min
Room 3
X-Men: First Class
4:30/9:30pm
Starring: Matthew Vaughn, James McAvoy, Michael
Time: 12pm-7pm (Closed on Tuesdays)
Until: August 21,2011
Venue: OX Warehouse, Intersection of Av. do Coronel
Mesquita and Av. Almirante Lacerda
Admission: Free
Western Views on China: Prints of the 19th
century about Macau
Fassbender, Kevin Bacon
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Duration: 132 min
Macau Tower
30-June to 13-July
Transformers - Dark of the moon
1:30pm / 4:15pm / 7:00pm / 9:45pm
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie HuntingtonWhiteley and Tyrese Gibson
Director: Michael Bay
Duration: 108 min
Offbeat
TV
Canal Macau
Opening Hours: 10am-7pm (no admission after 6:30pm,
closed on Mondays)
Until: December 31,2011
Venue: Macau Museum of Art, Av. Xian Xing Hai, NAPE
Admission: MOP5 (Free admission on Sundays and public
holidays)
The Past – Masters of Macau: Exhibition of
Poetry, Calligraphy, Painting and Seal-Carving
Opening Hours: 10am-7pm (No admission after 6:30pm,
closed on Mondays)
Until: July 31,2011
Venue: Macau Museum of Art, Av. Xian Xing Hai, NAPE
Admission: MOP5 (Free admission on Sundays and public
holidays)
On 13 July 1955, nightclub owner Ruth Ellis the last woman
in Great Britain to be put to death for murder, convicted of
killing her boyfriend David Blakely, is hanged. Ten years
later, death penalty for murder would be banned in England,
Scotland and Wales.
Born in Rhyl, Wales, in 1926, Ellis left school as a young
teenager, had a child and worked a variety of jobs, eventually becoming a nightclub hostess. In 1950, she married
dentist George Ellis, with whom she had a second child. The
marriage was short-lived and Ruth Ellis returned to working
in nightclubs. She then became involved in a tempestuous
relationship with David Blakely, a playboy race-car driver.
Ellis became pregnant but miscarried several days after a
fight during which Blakely hit her in the stomach. She later
became obsessed with Blakely when he failed to come see
her as promised. On April 10, 1955, she shot him to death
outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, North London.
During her trial, which began in June 1955, Ellis stated “It
was obvious that when I shot him I intended to kill him.” This
was a critical statement, as British law required demonstration of clear intent in order to convict someone of murder. It
reportedly took the jury less than half an hour to find Ellis
guilty and she automatically received the death penalty.
Thousands of people signed petitions protesting her punishment; however, on July 13, 1955, the 28-year-old Ellis was
hanged at Holloway Prison, a women’s institution in Islington, London. She was the last woman executed for murder
in Great Britain.
On August 13, 1964, Peter Anthony Allen and John Alan
West became the last people to be executed for murder in
England. In 1965, the death penalty for murder was banned
in England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland outlawed
capital punishment in 1973. However, several crimes, including treason, remained punishable by death in Great Britain
until 1998.
In 1985, a movie titled Dance With a Stranger chronicled
Ellis’ life. In December 2003, a British court dismissed an
appeal filed by Ellis’s sister asking for Ruth’s conviction to
be reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of “provocation
and/or diminished responsibility.”
13:00
TDM News (Repeted)
13:30
News at 24H (RTPi) Delayed Broadcast
14:30
RTPi Live
19:30
Soap Opera
20:28
Publicity
20:30
Main News, Financial & Weather Report
21:00
Noon News RTPi (Live Delayed)
22:10
Soap Opera
22:58
Publicity
23:00
TDM News
23:30
Portuguese Movie
01:15
Main News, Financial & Weather Report (Repeted)
01:50
RTPi Live
14
Texas baby breaks
hospital weight record
A newborn who tipped the scales at more than 16 pounds
(7.3 kilograms) broke the local hospital’s weight records in
Longview, Texas, press reported yesterday.
The baby boy, named JaMichael, delivered by Cesarean
section to parents Janet Johnson and Michael Brown early
Friday, exceeded doctors’ weight predictions by some four
pounds (1.8 kilos).
“We’re just amazed,” Johnson told the Longview News-Journal.
“I can’t believe he’s that big. A lot of the baby clothes we
bought for him will have to be returned. They’re already too
small for him to wear.”
The hospital also had trouble outfitting such a large baby: the
newborn nursery did not have diapers big enough to fit him,
the mother said.
According to local news reports, Johnson suffered from gestational diabetes during her pregnancy, which contributed to
her baby’s large size.
The condition causes a pregnant woman to become resistant to
her body’s own insulin and to pass higher than normal amount of
sugar to her baby, who stores the extra calories as fat.
JaMichael reportedly will be spending his first few days of life in
the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to regulate his blood sugar.
Times Infotainment
Sport
®
Weather
China
Min
Max
23
20
24
24
24
9
19
21
19
23
26
25
26
25
25
26
32
28
32
38
32
21
25
25
25
27
31
30
32
34
31
30
Asia-Pacific
Min
Max
Seoul
Tokyo
Manila
Hanoi
Ho Chi Minh City
Bangkok
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore
New Delhi
Mumbai
Karachi
Jakarta
B.S. Begawan
Sydney
Melbourne
Brisbane
21
26
26
25
23
26
25
25
28
25
28
24
25
8
9
6
25
33
31
33
34
34
34
32
36
31
34
31
33
16
14
22
World
Min
Max
Moscow
Frankfurt
Paris
London
New York
16
18
11
11
19
26
27
20
19
32
Beijing
Harbin
Tianjin
Urumqi
Xi’an
Lhasa
Chengdu
Chongqing
Kunming
Nanjing
Shanghai
Wuhan
Hangzhou
Taipei
Guangzhou
Hong Kong
The Born Loser by Chip Sansom
Condition
thundershower/cloudy
cloudy
thundershower/cloudy
clear
cloudy
moderate rain
shower
shower
shower
moderate rain
shower
shower/cloudy
thundershower/ moderate rain
thundershower
thundershower/heavy
moderate rain
Condition
rain
fine
thunderstorms
showers
showers
thunderstorms
showers
thunderstorms
thunderstorms
rain
cloudy
mist
cloudy
cloudy
showers
fine
Easy
Easy +
Medium
Hard
Condition
clear/thundershower
drizzle/moderate rain
thundershower/moderate rain
cloudy
shower/cloudy
Across
Your Stars
Aries
Taurus
Cancer
Gemini
March 21-April 19
April 20-May 20
May 21-June 21
June 22-July 22
Your internal combustion engine is purring
today — make the most of this hot energy!
You can make serious progress on almost
anything from romance to entrepreneurship,
and it’s fun, too!
You feel somewhat more attached than
usual to your people — or maybe some
object you never used to treat like a security
blanket. Now is the time for you to hang
back and wait for your position to shift.
You’re smart, sure — but today is about more
than just ideas. You need to take action, and
your energy ensures that you can make quite
a bit of progress without worrying about how
it all comes together.
You need to drive a harder bargain today
— the situation is really riding on your
unwillingness to take anyone’s first offer.
Sure, it’s uncomfortable, but you know how
to step up.
Leo
Virgo
Libra
Scorpio
1- ___ avis; 5- Close with force; 9- Pale bluish purple; 14- King
of comedy; 15- Prom wheels; 16- Incite; 17- Author Morrison; 18Are you ___ out?; 19- Hard candy; 20- Gather into a cluster; 23Call ___ day; 24- Cry ___ River; 25- Fibbed; 27- Mazda model;
31- Agitate; 33- The jig ___!; 37- Place in bondage; 39- Israeli
submachine gun; 40- Indian instrument; 41- School VIP position;
44- City near Provo; 45- Help; 46- Babble; 47- Branta sandvicensis;
48- Nae sayer?; 50- Guide; 51- Pack of cards; 53- Covering for the
head; 55- Bump off; 58- Admittedly; 64- Pierce; 66- “______ sprach
Zarathustra”; 67- Capital of the Ukraine; 68- Actress Berger; 69Chow ___; 70- Fish-eating eagle; 71- Give it ___!; 72- Alleviate;
73- Cong. meeting;
Down
July 23-August 22
August 23-September 22
September 23-October 22
October 23 - November 21
Your naturally warm personality is keeping
those around you happy and friendly today
— it makes life a lot sweeter! You should be
able to get your people to see that things are
looking up.
Your ability to adapt to changing
circumstances is about to be tested — so
get ready! It could come from work, home or
just randomly on the street, but you need to
show off your flexible side.
Tune in to the big picture today — you really
need to focus on long-term strategy and
planning. Today’s little details are harmless
and shouldn’t have much of an impact on
your life.
You need to keep a low profile today, because
things are getting out of hand out there. Your
own energy is best for behind-the-scenes
action, and if you look like a target, you’re
sure to find yourself under fire.
Sagittarius
Capricorn
Aquarius
Pisces
November 22-December 21
December 22-January 19
January 20-February 18
February 19-March 20
You are getting more than you had
bargained for — but in a good way! It’s one
of those days when you almost certainly
need to shower one person with gratitude.
That should make it win-win.
You are torn between two people in one
way or another, and it’s almost certain that
no matter which side you choose, the other
feels cheated. If you can find a way to beat
the game, everyone wins!
You get the last clue to something really big
today — something that could change your
world in a big way. It might not all be good,
but the net effects should definitely skew
toward the positive.
Your coworkers may need a boost of some
kind today — but good luck figuring out what
can appease them! It may be all you can do
to keep fights from breaking out all over the
place, so take a deep breath.
1- Pro ___; 2- Sleep like ___; 3- Pealed; 4- Indigo; 5- Thin glutinous
mud; 6- Straight; 7- Cupid; 8- Give a sermon; 9- Donnybrook; 10“…and seven years _____”; 11- Wrinkly fruit; 12- Electrical unit; 13“Only Time” singer; 21- Astrologer Sydney; 22- Floor cover, perhaps;
26- Detract; 27- Subatomic particle;
Yesterday’s solution
28- Accustom; 29- Colorado resort;
30- Swarmed; 32- Best; 34- Burn a
bit; 35- Sam, e.g.; 36- One forking
over; 38- Ignominious failure; 42Agnomen; 43- Brushes; 49- Essay;
52- Acclaim; 54- All together; 55___ boy!; 56- “Believe” singer;
57- ___ kleine Nachtmusik; 59Bloodsucking insect; 60- Squeezes
(out); 61- Calamitous; 62- Optical
device; 63- First name in fashion;
65- ACLU concerns;
Crossword puzzles provided by BestCrosswords.com
Useful telephone numbers
Emergency calls 999
Fire department 28 572 222
PJ (Open line) 993
PJ (Picket) 28 557 775
PSP 28 573 333
Customs 28 559 944
S. Januário Hospital 28 313 731
Kiang Wu Hospital 28 371 333
Commission Against Corruption
(CCAC) 28326 300
IACM 28 387 333
Tourism 28 882 184
Airport 59 888 88
Taxi (Yellow) 28 519 519
Taxi (Black) 28 939 939
Utilities
Water Supply – Report 1990 992
Telephone – Report 1000
Electricity – Report 28 339 922
Macau Daily Times 28 716 081
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16
Times business
Asian stocks tumble
on eurozone fears
A
sian stock markets
slumped yesterday,
extending a global
sell-off as fears grew that
the eurozone debt crisis
will spread, raising the
prospect of a devastating
default.
The crisis, which came
despite eurozone members agreeing to strengthen a multi-billion-dollar
fund to prevent Europe’s
debt woes engulfing other
states, sent the single currency tumbling.
Tokyo fell 1.43 percent, or 143.61 points, to
9,925.92, Sydney was 1.90
percent, or 86.9 points
lower at 4,495.4 and Seoul
tumbled 2.20 percent, or
2,109.73.
Hong Kong slumped 3.06
percent, or 684.07 points,
to 21,663.16 and Shanghai
fell 1.72 percent, or 48.11
points, to 2,754.58.
Investors have become
increasingly
concerned
that political leaders and
bankers holding Greek
debt talks in Brussels remain unable to agree on
how to avert an outright
default by Athens, sending down European and
US shares.
Analysts fear that the
Greek crisis might spread
to larger economies, such
as heavily indebted Italy and Spain – Europe’s
third- and fourth-largest
economies respectively.
Rome’s finances have
been called into question
due to worries over whether key austerity measures
will be approved amid
tensions in the cabinet,
while some also point out
that many cuts will not be
introduced soon enough.
The fears sent the longterm cost of borrowing for
Italy to the highest level
since the creation of the
eurozone.
The problems represent
“one of the worst moments
of the European monetary
crisis”, said one European
analyst – Jean-Francois
Robin, fixed-income strategist at Natixis in Paris.
International Monetary
Fund managing director Christine Lagarde on
Monday called the turmoil
that has raised fears of an
Italian meltdown “essentially market driven”.
But she added that while
Greece “has done a lot of
work” to reduce deficits,
“more work needs to be
done”.
On Monday the region’s
17 finance ministers agreed
on a range of measures
including “enhancing the
flexibility and the scope”
of the European stability fund set up to buttress
troubled members.
The talks were scheduled
to finesse a second rescue
package for Athens in September, but were unable
to shake investor concern
that Athens will be unable
to pay its debts.
Those fears were reinforced yesterday when
Dutch finance minister
Jan Kees de Jager said
his eurozone counterparts
were open to the possibility of allowing a selective
debt default within a new
rescue plan for Athens.
“It’s not excluded anymore, clearly,” he said on
arriving for talks aimed at
solving the crisis.
Greece last month averted a default after its parliament agreed to a batch
of austerity measures but
talks on a second bailout
for the beleaguered nation
have slowed.
Global markets tumbled
on Monday. On Wall Street
the Dow closed down 1.20
percent, the S&P 500 shed
1.81 percent and the Nasdaq fell two percent.
And European shares
yesterday extended the
previous day’s losses in
early trade.
Milan dived four percent, while London’s FTSE
100 dropped 1.90 percent,
Frankfurt’s DAX 30 shed
2.69 percent and the Paris
CAC 40 slid 2.36 percent.
Madrid’s IBEX 35 tumbled 3.75 percent.
In early European trade
the euro plummeted to a
four-month low of USD
1.3837 from USD 1.4029
late Monday in New York
and well down from the
USD 1.4188 in Asia on
Monday.
It was also at 110.85 yen
from 112.51 yen. It fetched
114.59 yen in Asia the previous day.
The dollar fell to 79.63
yen, compared with 80.24
in New York.
“It will take one or two
years for the sovereign
China cleaning up second oil spill
China National Offshore Oil Corporation recently accused of covering up a
huge spill is cleaning up another slick
after a breakdown at a rig off China’s
northeast coast, officials said yesterday.
The oil giant is trying to contain the
spill covering an area measuring one
square kilometre (0.4 square miles) of
Bohai Bay, the State Oceanic Administration said – the third accident to hit
CNOOC in recent weeks.
Up to 0.15 cubic metres of oil has
leaked into the water after the Suizhong
36-1 field central control system broke
down yesterday, the statement said.
CNOOC has been slammed by state
media and green groups over another
massive spill in Bohai Bay, which was
detected on June 4 but only made public nearly a month later.
CNOOC said last week the 840-squarekilometre slick was “basically under
control” while ConocoPhillips told reporters the leaks had been plugged.
But the oceanic administration
said oil was still seeping into the sea
at the weekend and ConocoPhillips
China has been ordered to find and
seal the leaking sources “as soon as
possible”, Chinese media reported
yesterday.
The June spill has caused alarm in
neighbouring South Korea, which yesterday called on Beijing to swiftly provide information on the leaking rig.
“I think it would be conscientious of
China to provide immediate information on the matter and possible outcomes to neighboring nations,” Foreign
Ministry spokesman Cho Byung-jae
told reporters.
In a separate incident, a CNOOC
refinery in the southern province of
Guangdong caught fire early Monday
but there were no casualties, the company said, adding the cause of the blaze
was still under investigation.
The refinery is located about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Daya Bay
nuclear power plant, the official Xinhua
news agency said Monday.
Meanwhile, as the nation tackled its
second oil spill in a month, China’s
maritime regulator tightened monitoring of offshore energy exploration by
companies including Cnooc.
The State Oceanic Administration
wants oil and gas explorers operating
off the coast to implement checks on all
drilling and production infrastructure
immediately, Director Liu Cigui said
in a statement on the administration’s
website. AFP/Bloomberg
The headquarters
17
of CNOOC in Beijing
®
debt issues in Europe to be
resolved,” said Masayoshi
Yano, a senior market analyst at Meiwa Securities
in Tokyo.
“Market sentiment is
fickle, switching back and
forth between optimism
and pessimism,” he told
Dow Jones Newswires.
Despite the region-wide
sell-off, Australia’s Macarthur Coal ended up 36.6
percent after Peabody of
the United States and European giant ArcelorMittal
launched a takeover bid
for the firm worth USD 5
billion.
On oil markets New
York’s main contract, light
sweet crude for delivery
in August, fell 56 cents to
USD 94.59 a barrel.
Brent North Sea crude for
August shed 62 cents to USD
116.62 in the afternoon.
Gold closed at USD
1,546.00- USD 1,547.00
an ounce in Hong Kong,
unchanged from Monday’s
close. (AFP)
Murdoch’s News stocks
fall in Australia
Shares in Rupert Murdoch’s Australia-listed News
Corporation fell 4.59 percent yesterday, to their lowest point in more than 18 months as the British phone
hacking scandal deepened.
As Australian Greens leader Bob Brown again called
for an independent media watchdog to prevent a similar scandal at home, News Corp dropped 73 cents to
close at Aus$15.19, its lowest finish since November
2009.
CMC Markets analyst Ben Le Brun said dealers were
“selling first and asking questions later” amid reports
that royalty and ex-prime minister Gordon Brown were
targeted in the scandal, which felled the Sunday tabloid
News of the World.
Adding to the firm’s problems, the British government announced that Australian-born Murdoch’s bid
to take over cable giant BSkyB would be referred to the
country’s competition commission.
“As the story seems to have gotten worse... News Corporation shares have come down accordingly,” Le Brun
said. “It’s not good times for News Corporation.”
News Corp, which is also listed in New York and London, fell more than seven percent in Sydney on Monday
as the fallout from claims that the News of the World
hacked the phone of a child murder victim continued.
The share slump came as Brown called for an inquiry
into journalism in Australia and a new independent
body to oversee ethics in the industry.
“I do think in these days of huge potential for invasion of privacy we ought to have a watchdog,” he told
reporters in Tasmania.
Times
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®
18
Times sports
Cycling
Football
Sky ponder legal action
over Flecha car crash
T
eam Sky are pondering whether to
take legal action against the television car which sent their Spaniard
rider Juan Antonio Flecha flying during the
race’s ninth stage on Sunday.
Flecha and Dutchman Johnny Hoogerland
survived being hit by a France Television
car as it overtook their five-man breakaway
group 35 km from the finish line.
The car was later excluded from the race
by furious organisers and France Television
later issued an official apology.
Team principal Dave Brailsford said the
crash “shouldn’t have happened”, adding the
team were going over all their options.
“There are different options available, but
[we’ll wait] until we’ve got the facts and got
the lawyers to say ‘you could do this’, ‘Team
Sky could do that’, ‘Juan as an individual
might want to do that’.
“We need to have a clear picture of what
those options are before we then decide which
one we may or may not wish to pursue.”
Asked whether that meant pursuing legal
proceedings, Brailsford added: “All the options is all the options.”
Team Sky lost yellow jersey contender
Bradley Wiggins to a broken collarbone during the crash-marred first week.
Flecha, who along with Hoogerland started
yesterday’s 10th stage, is now afraid he won’t
go much further. Three consecutive stages in
the Pyrenees start on Thursday.
“I’m more concerned about the Pyrenees.
I can’t bypass the Pyrenees,” said the Span-
A combo of the 2011 Tour de France most spectacular crashes after nine stages: (from top,
L-R) Slovenia’s Janez Brakjovic receiving medical assistance in the Carhaix-Cap Frehel
stage on July 6; Ukraine’s Yaroslav Popovych seen on the road after he crashed in the same
stage; Kazakh’s Alexandre Vinokourov being carried into the ambulance on Sunday in the
Issoire-Saint-Flour stage; and Spain’s Juan Antonio Flecha (L) and Netherland’s Johnny
Hoogerland (R) seen after their crash also on the weekend
iard, who suffered mainly cuts and grazes.
Hoogerland had 33 stitches put into deep gashes
he suffered after landing in a barbed wire fence.
But with the memory of Belgian Wouter Weylandt’s death from a crash in May’s Giro d’Italia
still fresh in the minds of many, Hoogerland –
who races with the modest Vacansoleil team –
refused to blame anyone for the incident.
“Nobody can be blamed for this. It’s a hor-
rible accident and I was in it. But I said to
Flecha, ‘We’re still alive and Wouter Weylandt died in a crash’,” he said.
Vacansoleil team manager Daan Luyckx
said they would only look into the possibility
of taking legal action “once the race is over”.
France television personally apologised to
Hoogerland however it was reported Monday
that Flecha has not had such an apology.
Contador meets ‘crash’ fan
Spanish rider Alberto Contador
Tour de France champion Alberto Contador has met, and forgiven,
the young fan who caused a crash in the first stage of the race and left
the Spaniard with a significant deficit and derailed his bid for a possible fourth yellow jersey.
At first reported to be a woman the fan, as it turned out, was a rugby-loving teenager from Les Herbiers called Theo.
After a first peloton had passed on the road to Mont des Alouettes the
13-year-old poked his head out to look up the road at the peloton.
Seconds later Kazakhstan’s Maxim Iglinsky collided with the teenager, sending him into the ditch. While he suffered cuts and stings
from nettles, the subsequent split in the peloton left Contador frantically chasing his rivals but finishing 1min 14sec behind most.
It was the worst possible start to the race for Spain’s three-time
champion, who has since crashed another three times.
After an ironic “Gracias hombre! [Thanks man!]” to Theo, Contador warned
of getting too close to the peloton when speeds can easily reach 60km/h.
“The important thing is to pay attention to the peloton next time
you’re on the road,” Contador said in L’Equipe.
“We ride fast and it’s dangerous. I would rather you enjoyed seeing
the riders go past.”
Theo, who endured a few sleepless nights after reliving the incident
on television, admitted: “It was the first time that we saw the Tour go
past. But after that happened my Mum was really ashamed.
Golf: Nicklaus tops greatest golfer poll
Jack Nicklaus was the runaway winner of
a readers’ poll in Golf Monthly magazine to
find the greatest player of the last 100 years.
Nicklaus, whose 18 major titles are a record, won 58 percent of the votes from a list
of 20 golfers with nearest challenger Tiger
Woods way back on 16 percent and Spanish
star Seve Ballesteros, who died in May this
year, third with eight percent of the vote.
“To be chosen among the many talented golfers
over that time period is humbling and greatly ap-
®
preciated,” said Nicklaus when told the result of
a poll published in the August edition of a magazine, which celebrates its centenary this year.
However, Woods, won the greatest shot of
the last 100 years for his chip-in from beside
the 16th green at August National as he won
the 2005 Masters.
Playing away from the hole, Woods saw his
ball go up a steep slope, roll back down again
and teeter on the lip of the cup before falling in.
Neither Nicklaus nor Woods, who’ve each
19
won the tournament three times, are playing at this year’s British Open, which starts
at Royal St George’s in Sandwich, south-east
of London, on Thursday.
Nicklaus, 71, retired from competitive golf
six years ago at the 2005 British Open at St
Andrews in Scotland.
Meanwhile the 35-year-old Woods, whose
14 majors put him second in the all-time list
behind fellow American Nicklaus, is currently sidelined with a knee injury.
All-African
draw: S.Africa
lucky, Ghana
unlucky
South Africa were lucky and Ghana unlucky when the 2011 All-Africa Games
football tournament mini-league draw
was made in Cairo yesterday.
‘Baby Bafana Bafana’ are in Group A
with hosts Mozambique, surprise inclusions Libya and Madagascar while the
‘Black Meteors’ face defending champions Cameroon, Uganda and Senegal in
Group B.
Only Mozambique and Cameroon were
seeded for a draw conducted by Confederation of African Football general secretary Hicham el-Amrani at the headquarters of the continental governing
body on the outskirts of the Egyptian
capital.
This heightened the risk of a lob-sided
draw and that is what happened with
Group B looking much stronger than
Group A for the September 3-18 tournament in Mozambique capital Maputo.
South Africa ousted Angola, Malawi
and Zimbabwe to reach a second consecutive All-Africa Games after sneaking
into qualifiers they forgot to enter thanks
to the withdrawal of cash-strapped Namibia.
None of the other Group A contenders
kicked a ball with Mozambique automatic qualifiers as hosts and Libya and
Madagascar receiving walkovers when
Egypt and Seychelles withdrew.
Former champions Egypt pulled out on
the eve of the draw after receiving a walkover when Libya withdrew because of an
ongoing armed rebellion against the fourdecade rule of Muamar Kadhafi.
Cameroon have won four of the last
five All-Africa Games football titles in
a tournament restricted to under-23
footballers and thumped Democratic
Republic of Congo 3-0 in Yaounde last
weekend to secure a last-eight place.
Ghana were even more impressive as
they brought a successful run by the high
scoring Nigerian ‘Dream Team’ this year
to a halt with a 2-0 triumph that earned
success on away goals.
Making the most of a second chance,
Senegal pipped Guinea after a penalty
shootout and maintained a reputation of
dogged fighters who score few goals and
concede even less.
Guinea Bissau shocked the Senegalese
in the previous round only to be kicked
out of the geographical-based eliminators for fielding an over-age player -- a
curse that continues to blight African
football.
The appearance of Uganda, who humiliated Kenya 5-1 in Nairobi before receiving a return-match walkover, reflects rising football standards in the Central African country since Scottish coach Bobby
Williamson took charge two years ago.
Mozambique, South Africa, Cameroon
and Ghana appear favourites to occupy
the top two places in the groups after the
round-robin action and reach the semifinals of a major attraction at the multisport African ‘Olympics’.
®
Closing News
Two held in slaying of singer Cabral
Guatemala arrested yesterday two suspects in connection with the shooting of Facundo Cabral, a popular singer
and songwriter in the Spanish-speaking world whose death
sparked outrage.
Those arrested were Elkin Hernandez, accused of contracting the killers, and Wilfred Arnold, seen at the scene of attack, said a spokesman for the International Commission
Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).
The Argentine-born Cabral, 74, Wednesday
was driving to the
in Gua13airport
July 2011
temala to fly to nearby Nicaragua when unidentified gunmen hit.
Officials believe the gunmen may have mistaken the singer
for Nicaraguan businessman Henry Farina, who had hired
Cabral for the shows.
As Mexico has tried to fight its drug trafficking scourge,
drug mafias have increasingly pushed south into Central
America and countries like Guatemala.
China’s forex
reserves hit
new record
View of the destroyed Vasiliko Power Station in Mari Cyprus, yesterday, one day after the huge explosions of seized Iranian arms
stored at the naval base
Cyprus anger over
‘criminal’ munitions blast
A
The commander of Cyprus’s navy, Andreas
Ioannides, was among the dead, as was the
commander of the Evangelos Florakis naval
base, Lambros Lambrou,
four other members of the armed services
and six firefighters.
Cyprus entered its second day of national
mourning with flags on public buildings at half
mast and all government events cancelled.
But the media were in no doubt that the
blast was avoidable and the government had
a lot of unanswered questions to address.
Although Defence Minister Costas Papacostas and Greek Cypriot National Guard commander Petros Tsaliklides resigned shortly
after the disaster, President Demetris Christofias also came under fire.
Ad
nger mounted in Cyprus yesterday
over the deaths of 12 fire brigade and
armed services personnel in a huge
munitions blast that sparked severe power
and water cuts on the Mediterranean holiday
island at the height of a scorching summer.
Frustrated Cypriots were using social networking sites and mobile texts to organise
protests against what they perceived as government negligence in not preventing the island’s worst peacetime military accident.
A large protest was being organised in the
capital Nicosia yesterday evening.
A huge blast on Monday in a seized Iranian arms
cache at a Greek Cypriot naval base on the south
coast killed 12 people and injured 62, of which two
remained in critical condition yesterday.
20
“It’s a crime,” screamed the front-page headline in pro-opposition daily Alithia (The Truth).
It said small explosions were recorded at the
arms cache several days before the killer blast
but pleas to navy commander Ioannides to remove the containers were ignored.
The English-language Cyprus Mail called it
a “criminal error,” while squarely putting the
blame on Christofias.
The independent Politis daily splashed over
its front page a picture of buckled containers
exposed to the sun only 300 metres (yards)
from the island’s largest power plant, with the
headline “Criminals: 12 dead and the economy in darkness because of criminal apathy.”
The Vassiliko plant, which accounted for
almost 60 percent of the island’s electricity
supply, was devastated by the force of the
blast and is expected to remain out of operation for months or even years.
The Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC)
said it would try to assure uninterrupted supplies to airports, ports, hospitals, and industrial and tourist areas, with cuts on supply.
With residents urged to save energy and water to try to ensure businesses, hotels and industry keep going, the Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority issued a decree making it compulsory to use generators where available.
A huge mobile generator was scheduled to arrive from Greece to help the resort island cope
with the peak holiday season. EAC chairman
Charis Thrassou warned that the cost of repairs
was likely to run to well over a billion euros
(USD 1.4 billion). Loss of supply also prompted
the closure of desalination plants, which had
allowed the gradual abandonment of summer
water rationing over the past two years.
China’s foreign exchange reserves soared to a record USD
3.1975 trillion at the end of June,
the central bank said yesterday,
highlighting concerns over inflation in the world’s second biggest
economy.
China’s forex reserves have ballooned in recent years, fuelled by
strong foreign investment, large
trade surpluses and inflows of “hot
money” – short-term speculative
funds in search of quick profits.
Foreign currencies earned by
Chinese exporters are changed for
yuan with the central bank so it
can control the value of the currency.
The foreign exchange is added to
China’s growing coffers, while the
yuan flow into the economy, adding to inflationary pressures.
“The central bank has been buying US 50 billion dollars worth of
foreign exchange each month for
the last quarter which is a huge
amount,” Capital Economics senior China economist Mark Williams told AFP.
“It’s a problem for the central
bank, but it’s one they cannot
avoid as long as China sticks to its
current exchange rate policy.”
China has restricted the amount
of money banks can lend on numerous occasions and hiked interest rates five times since October,
but is still struggling to keep its
politically sensitive inflation rate
under control.
Last month the country’s consumer price index rose 6.4 percent – the highest level since June
2008, when the inflation rate
reached 7.1 percent.
Food prices were up 14.4 percent
year-on-year in June, while the
price of pork, China’s preferred
choice of meat, was up 57.1 percent during the period, according
to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Higher food prices hurt low-level income earners most, as foodstuffs account for more than onethird of the monthly spending of
the average Chinese consumer,
according to the statistics bureau.
China’s stockpile of foreign currency – the largest in the world –
expanded by 30.3 percent from a
year earlier, the People’s Bank of
China said in a statement.
The central bank had said previously its reserves stood at USD
3.0447 trillion at the end of
March.

Carlos Couto`s Portugal Pavilion wins prize Page 3

Transcription

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