IRAN plans next month to begin installing equipment that will enrich uranium on an industrial scale, dramatically raising the bidding in its confrontation with the West.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iranian officials had told him they planned to start installing the centrifuge equipment in an underground plant at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran. Centrifuges are the machines that spin uranium gas to enrich it to a grade suitable for nuclear power or weapons.
ElBaradei said he was worried that further sanctions against Iran, which the United Nations has threatened to impose next month if it fails to halt its enrichment programme, were “only going to lead to escalation”.
He dismissed as “absolutely bonkers” suggestions that Israel or the US might mount a military attack on the Iranian nuclear sites. It might destroy the buildings, he said, but it would not deprive Iran of its nuclear expertise and would strengthen the hand of hardliners in the regime.
The US has said it wants a diplomatic solution to the standoff but has not ruled out military action if that failed.
In a move analysts said was a warning to Iran, it has sent a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf.
American officials say that there may be an element of bluff in the Iranian statement of intention as the regime had promised a year ago to have 3,000 centrifuges in operation by now.
The credibility of official Iranian pronouncements was further undermined last night when a leading politician in Tehran claimed that the centrifuges were already being installed. “We are now installing 3,000 centrifuges,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament’s foreign affairs and national security committee, announced. However his statement was swiftly denied by a spokesman of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation.
A formal announcement on Tehran’s nuclear plans is expected for the anniversary of the Iranian revolution next month.
In Washington, the White House reiterated the US stance that the installation of the centrifuges would be a “major miscalculation” by the Iranian government. UN sanctions imposed last month banned the transfer of sensitive materials and know-how to Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.
The United States has also imposed sanctions on two big Iranian state banks, ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran.
In a separate sign of mounting tensions Iran has demanded the removal of Chris Charlier, a Belgian UN official in charge of inspecting the country’s nuclear programme. The move follows a ban on 38 inspectors from the US, Britain, Germany and France that had pushed for UN sanctions.
The IAEA has a pool of 200 inspectors to verify Tehran is not diverting materials into bomb production. Iran has the legal right to reject any inspector and says it is still co-operating with the IAEA.
Diplomats have said the IAEA did not want a precedent set for hampering inspections and thereby escalating confrontation with the West.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
Ghost brides are murdered to give dead bachelors a wife in the afterlife
A ring of gangsters who traded in the bodies of women they murdered, selling them as brides to keep dead bachelors happy in the afterlife, has been arrested in China.
The arrests have exposed a trade that places a higher value on women when they are dead than when they are alive.
Yang Dongyan, 35, was arrested on January 4 in Sha’anxi province as he played cards with his children. In his prison cell, Mr Yang showed little remorse for committing two murders. He told the Legal Daily: “I just wanted to make money. It’s a quick way to make money. I was arrested too soon otherwise I had planned to do this business a few more times.”
Two accomplices, Liu Shengbao and Hui Haibao, were also arrested, as was Li Longsheng, a self-styled undertaker who traded the bodies to bereaved families.
Zhang Yanjun, chief of police in Yanchuan county, said: “It’s lucky that the case was cleared up in time or we don’t know how many women would have been killed by them. These people thought they had found a short cut to wealth.” Instead, they face the death penalty.
The men preyed on the superstitions of ill-educated farmers eager to ensure that a dead son was happy in the afterlife. It is not uncommon in rural parts of China for a family to seek out the body of a woman who has died to be buried alongside their son after the performance of a marriage ceremony for the deceased pair.
Ancestor worship is a tradition that runs through many aspects of Chinese life. One of the main Chinese festivals is Tomb Sweeping Day, when families visit graves of their forebears to clean them and burn incense. The spirit is believed to live on in the afterlife and at funerals families burn offerings of paper money and models of houses, cars and other little luxuries that the dead may need.
Mr Yang chanced upon the trade in dead bodies when he paid 12,000 yuan (£800) for a mentally handicapped woman whose family hoped to marry her off for a price. The trade in women as wives is a common practice in rural China and a woman may be sold several times by intermediaries before meeting her eventual husband.
Mr Yang arranged for the woman to stay in a guesthouse in Yanchuan county where Mr Liu offered him £666 for her. Mr Yang refused, until Mr Liu told him that the woman would be worth much more dead than alive. The next morning the two men set out across the Yellow River to meet “Old Li” in Xixian County, Shanxi province. Old Li agreed to buy the woman’s body for £1,050 and to complete the deal late at night on the Yanshuiguan bridge.
The next day Mr Yang killed the woman and took her body by taxi to the bridge where Mr Li was waiting and handed over £1,000 for her. For his part in the deal, Mr Liu received £300 and Mr Yang came away with a loss of £200 after his expenses.
Back at the guesthouse, Mr Yang told an old acquaintance, Mr Hui, that he had found an easy way to make money. The two men agreed to go into the body business together. Last November they sought out a prostitute they knew in nearby Yan’an — the city where Chairman Mao began his Communist revolution — but she threw them out after they said that they could not afford to pay her £20. They returned the next morning and killed her.
On December 3 they completed a similar body handover with Mr Li on the bridge. This time they made only £530 because the buyer was unhappy with the quality of the body and, after costs, Mr Yang and his two friends each earned £100 on that deal.
Old Li had made a name for himself in Xixian county by selling clothes to outfit the dead and by handing out cards that offered to help families in need of a spirit marriage. They want young and good-looking dead brides for their sons and regard the family of the girl as “in-laws”. Police discovered that Mr Li paid between £530 and £660 for a body and sold it on for as much as £2,300.
Fatal attraction
# Traditional Chinese belief holds that the living must tend to the wants and needs of dead relatives, who exist in an afterlife
# The tradition manifests itself in the burning of fake money or paper models of luxury goods
# It is believed by some that an unmarried life is incomplete, leading to the practice of minghun — burying single sons with recently dead young women to provide them with a wife in the afterlife
# Parents of a dead daughter often regard the money received in selling her for minghun as recompense for the dowry that they did not receive in her lifetime, while also posthumously elevating their child’s place in a patriarchal society
# Communist authorities tried to ban the practice, which datesfrom the Zhou dynasty (1122-256BC). It was also forbidden in the Book of Rites, texts that describe religious practices from the eighth to the fifth century BC
# Minghun survives mainly in the poor rural north, particularly in the remote plateau on the upper reaches of the Yellow River
The arrests have exposed a trade that places a higher value on women when they are dead than when they are alive.
Yang Dongyan, 35, was arrested on January 4 in Sha’anxi province as he played cards with his children. In his prison cell, Mr Yang showed little remorse for committing two murders. He told the Legal Daily: “I just wanted to make money. It’s a quick way to make money. I was arrested too soon otherwise I had planned to do this business a few more times.”
Two accomplices, Liu Shengbao and Hui Haibao, were also arrested, as was Li Longsheng, a self-styled undertaker who traded the bodies to bereaved families.
Zhang Yanjun, chief of police in Yanchuan county, said: “It’s lucky that the case was cleared up in time or we don’t know how many women would have been killed by them. These people thought they had found a short cut to wealth.” Instead, they face the death penalty.
The men preyed on the superstitions of ill-educated farmers eager to ensure that a dead son was happy in the afterlife. It is not uncommon in rural parts of China for a family to seek out the body of a woman who has died to be buried alongside their son after the performance of a marriage ceremony for the deceased pair.
Ancestor worship is a tradition that runs through many aspects of Chinese life. One of the main Chinese festivals is Tomb Sweeping Day, when families visit graves of their forebears to clean them and burn incense. The spirit is believed to live on in the afterlife and at funerals families burn offerings of paper money and models of houses, cars and other little luxuries that the dead may need.
Mr Yang chanced upon the trade in dead bodies when he paid 12,000 yuan (£800) for a mentally handicapped woman whose family hoped to marry her off for a price. The trade in women as wives is a common practice in rural China and a woman may be sold several times by intermediaries before meeting her eventual husband.
Mr Yang arranged for the woman to stay in a guesthouse in Yanchuan county where Mr Liu offered him £666 for her. Mr Yang refused, until Mr Liu told him that the woman would be worth much more dead than alive. The next morning the two men set out across the Yellow River to meet “Old Li” in Xixian County, Shanxi province. Old Li agreed to buy the woman’s body for £1,050 and to complete the deal late at night on the Yanshuiguan bridge.
The next day Mr Yang killed the woman and took her body by taxi to the bridge where Mr Li was waiting and handed over £1,000 for her. For his part in the deal, Mr Liu received £300 and Mr Yang came away with a loss of £200 after his expenses.
Back at the guesthouse, Mr Yang told an old acquaintance, Mr Hui, that he had found an easy way to make money. The two men agreed to go into the body business together. Last November they sought out a prostitute they knew in nearby Yan’an — the city where Chairman Mao began his Communist revolution — but she threw them out after they said that they could not afford to pay her £20. They returned the next morning and killed her.
On December 3 they completed a similar body handover with Mr Li on the bridge. This time they made only £530 because the buyer was unhappy with the quality of the body and, after costs, Mr Yang and his two friends each earned £100 on that deal.
Old Li had made a name for himself in Xixian county by selling clothes to outfit the dead and by handing out cards that offered to help families in need of a spirit marriage. They want young and good-looking dead brides for their sons and regard the family of the girl as “in-laws”. Police discovered that Mr Li paid between £530 and £660 for a body and sold it on for as much as £2,300.
Fatal attraction
# Traditional Chinese belief holds that the living must tend to the wants and needs of dead relatives, who exist in an afterlife
# The tradition manifests itself in the burning of fake money or paper models of luxury goods
# It is believed by some that an unmarried life is incomplete, leading to the practice of minghun — burying single sons with recently dead young women to provide them with a wife in the afterlife
# Parents of a dead daughter often regard the money received in selling her for minghun as recompense for the dowry that they did not receive in her lifetime, while also posthumously elevating their child’s place in a patriarchal society
# Communist authorities tried to ban the practice, which datesfrom the Zhou dynasty (1122-256BC). It was also forbidden in the Book of Rites, texts that describe religious practices from the eighth to the fifth century BC
# Minghun survives mainly in the poor rural north, particularly in the remote plateau on the upper reaches of the Yellow River
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Eva Longoria To Continue Role As Desperate Housewife
Eva Longoria has denied rumours she is quitting "Desperate Housewives."
Eva - who plays feisty seductress Gabrielle Solis in the hit series - was rumored to be planning to leave the show after the third season, but insists she has no intention of walking away from Wisteria Lane.
She told Britain's Arena magazine, "No way, we're contracted for the next seven years. A lot can happen in a ten-year contract. You know how we all started and Marcia is married and had a baby, Nicollette is engaged to someone else, I'm getting married. Still, it's going to be an interesting ten years."
The 31-year-old has also revealed she has started to become more like house proud "Desperate Housewives" character Bree Van De Kamp, played by Marcia Cross, since meeting her basketball player fiancé Tony Parker.
She said, "I'm very Bree in my life now - I bake and I cook. Tony's a lucky guy."
Eva says Tony has also turned her into a wine expert.
She said, "My fiancé educates me on wine. I didn't care for wine before. But I'm not a big drinker. I actually don't drink at all except for at dinner, occasionally I'll have a glass of wine."
Nokia Net Profits Up 19 Percent in 4Q
World-leading mobile phone maker Nokia Corp. said Thursday that its net profit rose 19 percent on growing sales in the fourth quarter, beating market expectations.
Net profit came to 1.27 billion euros ($1.65 billion), up from 1.07 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2005. Quarterly sales rose 13 percent to 11.7 billion euros ($15.22 billion), from 10.33 billion euros in the same period a year earlier.
Analysts polled by SME Direkt had forecast a net profit of 1.11 billion euros ($1.44 billion) and sales of 11.58 billion euros ($15.06 billion).
Meanwhile, the closely watched average selling price of Nokia phones dropped to 89 euros ($116), from 93 euros in the previous quarter and 99 euros in the fourth quarter of 2005. That figure has dropped consistently, reflecting a higher proportion of low-end phones in emerging markets such as India and China.
Shares in Nokia gained 4 percent to 16.22 euros ($21.09) on the Helsinki exchange after the announcements.
"Nokia was able to increase its share of the global device market significantly in 2006 to an estimated 36 percent, clearly solidifying our No. 1 position in the industry," Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said.
"We achieved this result through the strengths of Nokia's world class brand, products, cost structure and efficiency, without sacrificing our operating margins or cash flow."
The Finnish company said it expects the global market for mobile phones to grow 10 percent in 2007 to 978 million handsets. It said its target is to continue raising its market share.
Nokia was the last of the world's top mobile phone makers to release fourth-quarter earnings.
Last week, the company's main rival, Motorola Inc., said it saw profits drop 48 percent in the last three months of 2006 and announced it would cut 5 percent of its work force to improve operating costs.
The industry's No. 3 player, Samsung Electronics Co., said profit fell 8 percent, citing price declines for other key products such as flash memory chips and liquid crystal displays. But it said it sold 32 million mobile phones during the quarter, a company record.
Meanwhile, the fast-growing Sony Ericsson said its net profit more than tripled in the quarter, beating expectations as record sales of its music and camera handsets helped it gain market shares.
Net profit came to 1.27 billion euros ($1.65 billion), up from 1.07 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2005. Quarterly sales rose 13 percent to 11.7 billion euros ($15.22 billion), from 10.33 billion euros in the same period a year earlier.
Analysts polled by SME Direkt had forecast a net profit of 1.11 billion euros ($1.44 billion) and sales of 11.58 billion euros ($15.06 billion).
Meanwhile, the closely watched average selling price of Nokia phones dropped to 89 euros ($116), from 93 euros in the previous quarter and 99 euros in the fourth quarter of 2005. That figure has dropped consistently, reflecting a higher proportion of low-end phones in emerging markets such as India and China.
Shares in Nokia gained 4 percent to 16.22 euros ($21.09) on the Helsinki exchange after the announcements.
"Nokia was able to increase its share of the global device market significantly in 2006 to an estimated 36 percent, clearly solidifying our No. 1 position in the industry," Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said.
"We achieved this result through the strengths of Nokia's world class brand, products, cost structure and efficiency, without sacrificing our operating margins or cash flow."
The Finnish company said it expects the global market for mobile phones to grow 10 percent in 2007 to 978 million handsets. It said its target is to continue raising its market share.
Nokia was the last of the world's top mobile phone makers to release fourth-quarter earnings.
Last week, the company's main rival, Motorola Inc., said it saw profits drop 48 percent in the last three months of 2006 and announced it would cut 5 percent of its work force to improve operating costs.
The industry's No. 3 player, Samsung Electronics Co., said profit fell 8 percent, citing price declines for other key products such as flash memory chips and liquid crystal displays. But it said it sold 32 million mobile phones during the quarter, a company record.
Meanwhile, the fast-growing Sony Ericsson said its net profit more than tripled in the quarter, beating expectations as record sales of its music and camera handsets helped it gain market shares.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Judge:You can call someone a 'fat bastard' but don't be racist
A man who called a police surgeon a “f***ing Paki” was advised yesterday by a judge: “Next time call him a fat bastard and don’t say anything about his colour.”
The judge gave the unusual advice after describing the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute the man for a racially aggravated offence as “a nonsense”.
Matthew Stiddard had been taken into custody by police officers who mistook him for a suspect in another case.
After two hours in a cell he demanded to see a doctor, complaining that his back hurt. But when Dr Imraan Jhetam arrived, Stiddart refused to be seen by him.
Exeter Crown Court heard that Stiddart, 36, swore and told him: “I want an English doctor, not a f***ing Paki.”
Stiddart had opted for the case to be heard at Crown court, where he admitted a charge of racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress.
Judge Paul Darlow told the court that the case should never have been brought and suggested that Dr Jhetam should have let the insults “roll off his back”.
The judge said: “I wonder what this is doing in the Crown Court. This was a single sentence to a man who should not have taken it so seriously. He is a man of some considerable standing in society and I cannot see that it caused him any distress or hurt.
“It should not have caused a problem in this case.
“To charge it in the first place rather than, say, let it go by with a caution strikes me as rather odd. We let people hit each other and break into people’s homes and they are not charged.”
Ann Reddrop, for the prosecution, said: “When there is a burglary and it is in the public interest there will be a prosecution. This was a police surgeon and he is entitled to the same protection as anyone else.”
Judge Darlow replied: “So next time call him a fat bastard and don’t say anything about his colour. When we have an overstretched police force and an overstretched CPS one wonders why we are sitting here with long faces dealing with one sentence.”
The judge said last night that his comments were “not intended to make light of racist remarks”.
He said: “Any reading of what was actually said in court would make it clear that the potential seriousness of what occurred was that a police surgeon was threatened with violence and non-racial abuse to the extent that he decided he needed to leave the cell to which he had been called. This amounted to an assault, but this was not the offence charged.
“A gratuitous single piece of racist abuse was uttered as the surgeon left. This was the charge on which the full weight of the law had been brought to bear. My comments were not intended to make light of racist remarks.
“I fully accept that in a circumstance and time they can be both offensive and distressing to those to whom they are addressed. When made by a drunk towards an obviously highly professional, educated and respected member of society in a position of clear authority over the defendant, I found it hard to conceive that it could be taken as seriously upsetting abuse.”
“It struck me as disproportionate to have brought this particular charge on its own to the Crown Court.”
The court heard that Stiddard was in a pub in Dawlish, south Devon, when police entered looking for someone else. He fitted the description of the wanted man and, after being confronted by police, became abusive and was arrested.
Stiddard fitted the description of the wanted man and was asked to step outside. He became abusive and aggressive and that led to his arrested for a public order offence.
Stiddard received a conditional discharge for two years and was ordered to pay £45 towards the prosecution costs of £150.
A spokeswoman for the Commission for Racial Equality said last night: “It is a slightly unusual case and a difficult issue. We would need to look further into this before making any comment.
“The problem for us is we have to look at the Race Relations Act to look at the legal ramifications.”
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