Two former Bank of China managers and their wives were handed lengthy jail terms on Wednesday for their roles in a 485-million-dollar fraud ,us justice authorities said.
The two men, Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun, were convicted by a federal jury in Las Vegas last August of masterminding an elaborate plot that saw them attempt to embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars.
Xu Chaofan was sentenced to 25 years in prison while Xu Guojun was handed a 22-year jail term. Both wives of the men received eight years in prison each and all four were ordered to pay 482 million dollars in restitution.
A third bank manager, Yu Zhendong, had pleaded guilty and cooperated with US government prosecutors trying the case.
During last year's trial, jurors heard how the managers laundered stolen millions through a network of accounts in Hong Kong, Canada and the United States, where they had planned to immigrate.
All five defendants were charged with a criminal conspiracy that began in 1991 and continued until October 2004 when the former bank managers and their wives were arrested.
The court heard how the former bank managers created a series of shell corporations in Hong Kong which were used to funnel the cash into personal bank and investment accounts.
Some of the money ended up on gaming tables at Las Vegas casinos, where the accused would frequently lay lavish bets of up to 80,000 dollars
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Airlines told to cite total payable fare
The asterisk on airline fare ads that could translate into many thousands payable over and above the low-sounding basic fares is set to
go.
Director general of civil aviation Nasim Zaidi has given all airlines, domestic and international, 30 days to correct their websites, systems and travel agent database so that passengers get a single all-inclusive figure of the total amount payable.
"Where the director-general is satisfied that any air transport undertaking has established excessive or predatory tariff or has indulged in oligopolistic practice, he may, by order, issue directions to such air transport undertaking," the circular says.
The new directive also states that the DGCA will keep a watch on fare levels to check overcharging and to see if certain airlines have ganged up to influence fares.
While the warning to domestic airlines for a single all-inclusive fare was issued some months back, Nasim Zaidi has now brought foreign carriers into the ambit. The timeframe of 30 days has also been communicated to all airlines.
"This rule applies to both Indian and foreign carriers. They have been given 30 days to change their systems, websites. Once this time period expires, we'll be asking them for a compliance report. Passengers must get the correct information and not be misled," Zaidi said.
The DGCA circular says airlines must clearly state the all-inclusive fares on their websites, newspapers, office and with the travel agents.
go.
Director general of civil aviation Nasim Zaidi has given all airlines, domestic and international, 30 days to correct their websites, systems and travel agent database so that passengers get a single all-inclusive figure of the total amount payable.
"Where the director-general is satisfied that any air transport undertaking has established excessive or predatory tariff or has indulged in oligopolistic practice, he may, by order, issue directions to such air transport undertaking," the circular says.
The new directive also states that the DGCA will keep a watch on fare levels to check overcharging and to see if certain airlines have ganged up to influence fares.
While the warning to domestic airlines for a single all-inclusive fare was issued some months back, Nasim Zaidi has now brought foreign carriers into the ambit. The timeframe of 30 days has also been communicated to all airlines.
"This rule applies to both Indian and foreign carriers. They have been given 30 days to change their systems, websites. Once this time period expires, we'll be asking them for a compliance report. Passengers must get the correct information and not be misled," Zaidi said.
The DGCA circular says airlines must clearly state the all-inclusive fares on their websites, newspapers, office and with the travel agents.
It's change vs change in West Bengal
and the Trinamool are both seeking change. But there's a twist. The Left wants Bengal to be the catalyst for a regime change at the Centre. And for that, the Left needs to repeat 2004 in Bengal -35 out of the 42 seats in Bengal.
"We have to bring about a change - a change in government policies," Politburo Member, CPI(M), Brinda Karat is heard saying in a public meeting.
"The slogan of the people is parivartan," says Dinesh Trivedi, Trinamool Candidate, in Barrackpore.
But the Opposition is viewing these elections as an opportunity to end the three decade-old dominance of the Left. The alliance between Trinamool and Congress is confident of securing 16 to 18 seats in these elections.
"The change is happening from the grass roots - from the Panchayat levels we have won the Nandigram bypolls, we have won Bishnupur bypolls, where they have won for 32 years," says Dinesh Trivedi.
Post-Nandigram and Singur, the Trinamool has done well at the Panchayat polls and assembly bypolls. Now, the Opposition is pitching these elections as a vote on the performance of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government.
"The battle for Bengal will be in 2011 but the Trinamool and the Congress is bringing it in 2009," puts forth Brinda Karat.
But one thing is clear. Results of these elections will certainly redefine Left's role - both in national politics as well in the state
"We have to bring about a change - a change in government policies," Politburo Member, CPI(M), Brinda Karat is heard saying in a public meeting.
"The slogan of the people is parivartan," says Dinesh Trivedi, Trinamool Candidate, in Barrackpore.
But the Opposition is viewing these elections as an opportunity to end the three decade-old dominance of the Left. The alliance between Trinamool and Congress is confident of securing 16 to 18 seats in these elections.
"The change is happening from the grass roots - from the Panchayat levels we have won the Nandigram bypolls, we have won Bishnupur bypolls, where they have won for 32 years," says Dinesh Trivedi.
Post-Nandigram and Singur, the Trinamool has done well at the Panchayat polls and assembly bypolls. Now, the Opposition is pitching these elections as a vote on the performance of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government.
"The battle for Bengal will be in 2011 but the Trinamool and the Congress is bringing it in 2009," puts forth Brinda Karat.
But one thing is clear. Results of these elections will certainly redefine Left's role - both in national politics as well in the state
Labourer’s daughter scripts tale of grit
Priti Maithil, 23, is living out the Indian dream. The daughter of a laid-off casual labourer at a local sugar mill in Sehore, a sleepy little town 35 km away from Bhopal, she has secured the 92nd rank in the Union Public Service Commission examinations this year and is all set to join the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
It wasn’t easy. Her father, Santosh Kumar, had lost his job in 2002 when the mill shut down. He then took to farming and ekes out a living growing wheat on seven acres he ws given by the mill management.
“We faced tough times, but my parents never let me feel deprived,” said Maithil, who likes reading, painting, debating and cooking. Relatives also chipped in — a paternal uncle supported her financially when she decided to join a coaching institute in Delhi.
A graduate in agriculture from Rafi Ahmed Kidwai College of Agriculture, Sehore, Maithil, who speaks fluent English — she studied in a local English medium school — does not subscribe to the view that the UPSC examinations are loaded in favour of those from English medium schools.
“More people from non-urban backgrounds are getting selected. That’s good, because they have a first-hand feel of the problems faced by the common man,” she said.
It wasn’t easy. Her father, Santosh Kumar, had lost his job in 2002 when the mill shut down. He then took to farming and ekes out a living growing wheat on seven acres he ws given by the mill management.
“We faced tough times, but my parents never let me feel deprived,” said Maithil, who likes reading, painting, debating and cooking. Relatives also chipped in — a paternal uncle supported her financially when she decided to join a coaching institute in Delhi.
A graduate in agriculture from Rafi Ahmed Kidwai College of Agriculture, Sehore, Maithil, who speaks fluent English — she studied in a local English medium school — does not subscribe to the view that the UPSC examinations are loaded in favour of those from English medium schools.
“More people from non-urban backgrounds are getting selected. That’s good, because they have a first-hand feel of the problems faced by the common man,” she said.
It’s a way of life
In Kadachha village like in many others in Madhya Pradesh, social discrimination has become a way of life, with Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) accepting it as a tradition to be followed.
A visit to this village in Ujjain district (adjoining Indore) — that shot into the limelight following an HT report based on the findings of NGO Jan Sahas and Unicef on caste discrimination in serving of mid-day meals and care of pregnant and postpartum Dalit women — showed how deep-rooted the malaise is.
A schoolteacher belonging to the Dalit community said on condition of anonymity fearing further victimisation, “I have experienced it all my life. We can’t mount a horse at marriage processions. We can’t celebrate in upper caste localities with drums and the like. We have to get off a cycle if an elderly person from the upper caste is close by. The list is endless.”
“But what can an individual do when the practice is accepted even by members of the reserved class. If I make a hue and cry over the issue, the elders in my own community will gag me,” he said.
Ignorant of the stigma attached to the practice, Lekha (only name mentioned), a standard V student said, “We have always been sitting in separate rows for mid-day meals. Is it bad?” When informed that it was a violation of his rights, the schoolboy said, “My father never told me this.”
The sarpanch (headman) of the village, Balaram Jaat, went to the extent of defending the discrimination. “No one tells Dalits to refrain from eating at public functions with the upper caste people or remain outside the houses of Brahmins or Rajputs. They do it on their own. They feel it is a tradition that has to be kept alive.”
Among the 900-odd people living in the village, nearly 90 per cent belong to the Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Classes. Some Brahmins and Rajputs also live in the village.
The localities of the upper caste and the Dalits are clearly defined.
The headman claimed that the upper caste people have been living here for generations. “How can they (upper castes) be asked to leave their traditional homes and construct houses in other localities?” He implied that as long as the upper castes live in locality, the tradition of subservience should be followed.
A visit to this village in Ujjain district (adjoining Indore) — that shot into the limelight following an HT report based on the findings of NGO Jan Sahas and Unicef on caste discrimination in serving of mid-day meals and care of pregnant and postpartum Dalit women — showed how deep-rooted the malaise is.
A schoolteacher belonging to the Dalit community said on condition of anonymity fearing further victimisation, “I have experienced it all my life. We can’t mount a horse at marriage processions. We can’t celebrate in upper caste localities with drums and the like. We have to get off a cycle if an elderly person from the upper caste is close by. The list is endless.”
“But what can an individual do when the practice is accepted even by members of the reserved class. If I make a hue and cry over the issue, the elders in my own community will gag me,” he said.
Ignorant of the stigma attached to the practice, Lekha (only name mentioned), a standard V student said, “We have always been sitting in separate rows for mid-day meals. Is it bad?” When informed that it was a violation of his rights, the schoolboy said, “My father never told me this.”
The sarpanch (headman) of the village, Balaram Jaat, went to the extent of defending the discrimination. “No one tells Dalits to refrain from eating at public functions with the upper caste people or remain outside the houses of Brahmins or Rajputs. They do it on their own. They feel it is a tradition that has to be kept alive.”
Among the 900-odd people living in the village, nearly 90 per cent belong to the Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Classes. Some Brahmins and Rajputs also live in the village.
The localities of the upper caste and the Dalits are clearly defined.
The headman claimed that the upper caste people have been living here for generations. “How can they (upper castes) be asked to leave their traditional homes and construct houses in other localities?” He implied that as long as the upper castes live in locality, the tradition of subservience should be followed.
Fourth phase of polling today; Congress eyeing big gains
Vote 2009 enters the penultimate round, with polling in 85 Lok Sabha seats across eight states on Thursday, in what is seen as a crucial phase for the Congress that’s eyeing big gains in Rajasthan, West Bengal and Punjab.
On its part, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be looking to cut possible losses in Rajasthan, while the Left Front battles to retain its electoral stronghold in West Bengal.
Then there is Delhi, where the Congress won six out of seven seats in 2004 and is hoping for a repeat.
In this round, Congress is defending 27 seats that it had won in 2004, followed by rival BJP that's battling to retain 25 seats, most of them in Rajasthan that's voting in one go.On the eve of polling, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said she was confident that Congress would sweep Delhi. “A performing government, committed to development, is our message to the voters,” she said, referring to 1.1 crore voters in the capital city.
Across India, about 9.5 crore people are eligible to vote on Thursday, which will take the total number of seats polled to 457. The remaining 86 seats will go to the polls on May 13.
Congress stalwart Pranab Mukherjee (73), BJP President Rajnath Singh (57) along with regional satraps Lalu Prasad (60) of Rashriya Janata Dal, Mulayam Singh Yadav (69) of Samajwadi Party and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah (72) are among the 1,315 candidates in the fray.
In this round, Congress is defending 27 seats that it had won in 2004, followed by rival BJP that's battling to retain 25 seats, most of them in Rajasthan that's voting in one go.
The BJP, pollsters say, could see some unexpected gains in western Uttar Pradesh, where 17 seats are voting.
In this region, it is also a test for Mulayam Singh whose party had won 10 seats in an alliance with Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). This time the RLD has switched to BJP.
Election managers from the Congress party have high hopes from this round, which could either add a good number of seats to its total tally or offset losses elsewhere.
In the outgoing Lok Sabha, Congress had only four seats from Rajasthan compared to BJP's 21. Congress' hopes to improve its tally rest on the defeat of BJP in assembly elections in the state, held in December.
There are also gains to be made in Punjab, where the ruling Akali Dal-BJP alliance is battling anti-incumbency.
In West Bengal — 17 out of the states' 42 seats vote on Thursday — the Left Front faces a tough fight from the Congress-Mamata Banerjee combine.
In Haryana, the Congress is on the defensive, trying to retain the nine seats out of 10 it had won last time. This time, it faces a formidable alliance of BJP and local INLD.
On its part, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be looking to cut possible losses in Rajasthan, while the Left Front battles to retain its electoral stronghold in West Bengal.
Then there is Delhi, where the Congress won six out of seven seats in 2004 and is hoping for a repeat.
In this round, Congress is defending 27 seats that it had won in 2004, followed by rival BJP that's battling to retain 25 seats, most of them in Rajasthan that's voting in one go.On the eve of polling, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said she was confident that Congress would sweep Delhi. “A performing government, committed to development, is our message to the voters,” she said, referring to 1.1 crore voters in the capital city.
Across India, about 9.5 crore people are eligible to vote on Thursday, which will take the total number of seats polled to 457. The remaining 86 seats will go to the polls on May 13.
Congress stalwart Pranab Mukherjee (73), BJP President Rajnath Singh (57) along with regional satraps Lalu Prasad (60) of Rashriya Janata Dal, Mulayam Singh Yadav (69) of Samajwadi Party and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah (72) are among the 1,315 candidates in the fray.
In this round, Congress is defending 27 seats that it had won in 2004, followed by rival BJP that's battling to retain 25 seats, most of them in Rajasthan that's voting in one go.
The BJP, pollsters say, could see some unexpected gains in western Uttar Pradesh, where 17 seats are voting.
In this region, it is also a test for Mulayam Singh whose party had won 10 seats in an alliance with Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). This time the RLD has switched to BJP.
Election managers from the Congress party have high hopes from this round, which could either add a good number of seats to its total tally or offset losses elsewhere.
In the outgoing Lok Sabha, Congress had only four seats from Rajasthan compared to BJP's 21. Congress' hopes to improve its tally rest on the defeat of BJP in assembly elections in the state, held in December.
There are also gains to be made in Punjab, where the ruling Akali Dal-BJP alliance is battling anti-incumbency.
In West Bengal — 17 out of the states' 42 seats vote on Thursday — the Left Front faces a tough fight from the Congress-Mamata Banerjee combine.
In Haryana, the Congress is on the defensive, trying to retain the nine seats out of 10 it had won last time. This time, it faces a formidable alliance of BJP and local INLD.
Ministers keep innocent on DNA database
the genetic profiles of hundreds of thousands of innocent people are to be kept on the national DNA database for up to 12 years in a decision critics claim is designed to sidestep a European human rights ruling that the "blanket" retention of suspects' data is unlawful.
The proposed new rules for the national DNA databaseto be put forward tomorrow by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, include plans to keep the DNA profiles of innocent people who are arrested but not convicted of minor offences for six years.
The proposal would also apply to children from age 10 who are arrested but never successfully prosecuted.
In cases of more serious violent and sexual crime, innocent people's genetic codes will be kept for 12 years.
It was widely expected that the DNA profiles, samples and fingerprints of 850,000 innocent people kept on the database would be destroyed in response to the ruling by the European court of human rights last December.
But the proposals fall short of those expectations and contrast sharply with the situation in Scotland, where only the DNA profiles of suspects arrested for serious violent and sexual offences are retained for a maximum of five years.
Human rights groups, and opposition politicians united tonightin expressing dismay that the Home Office had rejected that option and predicted a race to the courts to challenge the new policy.
"The government just doesn't get this," said the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling. The Liberal Democrats' Chris Huhne added: "This is an undignified rearguard action designed to give as little as possible."
Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti said: "Wholly innocent people – including children – will have their most intimate details stockpiled for years on a database that will remain massively out of step with the rest of the world."
But Home Office ministers say their proposals do comply with the landmark S and Marper judgment in Strasbourg which declared unlawful their policy of keeping all unconvicted suspects' DNA profiles indefinitely because of its "blanket and indiscriminate" nature. The police are now to be asked to spend up to two years trawling the existing 850,000 DNA profiles – the numerical digital code recording the individual's DNA – of innocent people on the database to see if any of them have a criminal record for any other offences.
The Home Office say 350,000 are known to be linked to entries on the police national computer. For the remaining 500,000 it is not yet possible to say whether their arrest led to a conviction or not and their DNA profile will be removed only once this check has been made.
The package proposed by the home secretary to meet the ruling include:
• Retaining indefinitely all DNA profiles and fingerprints of those convicted of an imprisonable offence.
• Keeping for 12 years the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted of serious sexual and violent offences.
• Keeping for six years the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted of minor offences.
• Removing the profiles of children when they reach 18 only if they have been arrested for only one minor offence.
• Adding the profiles of 30,000 more criminals convicted abroad or serving community sentences for serious offences.
• Destroying the genetic DNA samples held by the police once they have been converted into a DNA profile.
The home secretary said the database proposals would ensure that "the right people are on it, as well as considering where people should come off".
The Home Office estimates that even this package will mean 4,500 fewer crimes each year being detected compared with the current policy of retaining indefinitely the profiles of all those arrested.
"It is crucial that we do everything we can to protect the public by preventing crime and bringing offenders to justice. The DNA database plays a vital role in helping us do that and will help ensure that a great many criminals are behind bars where they belong," said Smith.
But Grayling said: "Ministers are just trying to get away with as little as they can instead of taking action to remove innocent people from the database." Huhne added that the number of innocent people on the database had risen to 925,000 since
excerpts from the guardian.com
The proposed new rules for the national DNA databaseto be put forward tomorrow by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, include plans to keep the DNA profiles of innocent people who are arrested but not convicted of minor offences for six years.
The proposal would also apply to children from age 10 who are arrested but never successfully prosecuted.
In cases of more serious violent and sexual crime, innocent people's genetic codes will be kept for 12 years.
It was widely expected that the DNA profiles, samples and fingerprints of 850,000 innocent people kept on the database would be destroyed in response to the ruling by the European court of human rights last December.
But the proposals fall short of those expectations and contrast sharply with the situation in Scotland, where only the DNA profiles of suspects arrested for serious violent and sexual offences are retained for a maximum of five years.
Human rights groups, and opposition politicians united tonightin expressing dismay that the Home Office had rejected that option and predicted a race to the courts to challenge the new policy.
"The government just doesn't get this," said the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling. The Liberal Democrats' Chris Huhne added: "This is an undignified rearguard action designed to give as little as possible."
Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti said: "Wholly innocent people – including children – will have their most intimate details stockpiled for years on a database that will remain massively out of step with the rest of the world."
But Home Office ministers say their proposals do comply with the landmark S and Marper judgment in Strasbourg which declared unlawful their policy of keeping all unconvicted suspects' DNA profiles indefinitely because of its "blanket and indiscriminate" nature. The police are now to be asked to spend up to two years trawling the existing 850,000 DNA profiles – the numerical digital code recording the individual's DNA – of innocent people on the database to see if any of them have a criminal record for any other offences.
The Home Office say 350,000 are known to be linked to entries on the police national computer. For the remaining 500,000 it is not yet possible to say whether their arrest led to a conviction or not and their DNA profile will be removed only once this check has been made.
The package proposed by the home secretary to meet the ruling include:
• Retaining indefinitely all DNA profiles and fingerprints of those convicted of an imprisonable offence.
• Keeping for 12 years the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted of serious sexual and violent offences.
• Keeping for six years the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted of minor offences.
• Removing the profiles of children when they reach 18 only if they have been arrested for only one minor offence.
• Adding the profiles of 30,000 more criminals convicted abroad or serving community sentences for serious offences.
• Destroying the genetic DNA samples held by the police once they have been converted into a DNA profile.
The home secretary said the database proposals would ensure that "the right people are on it, as well as considering where people should come off".
The Home Office estimates that even this package will mean 4,500 fewer crimes each year being detected compared with the current policy of retaining indefinitely the profiles of all those arrested.
"It is crucial that we do everything we can to protect the public by preventing crime and bringing offenders to justice. The DNA database plays a vital role in helping us do that and will help ensure that a great many criminals are behind bars where they belong," said Smith.
But Grayling said: "Ministers are just trying to get away with as little as they can instead of taking action to remove innocent people from the database." Huhne added that the number of innocent people on the database had risen to 925,000 since
excerpts from the guardian.com
Art historians claim Van Gogh's ear 'cut off by Gauguin'
Vincent van Gogh's fame may owe as much to a legendary act of self-harm, as it does to his self-portraits. But, 119 years after his death, the tortured post-Impressionist's bloody ear is at the centre of a new controversy, after two historians suggested that the painter did not hack off his own lobe but was attacked by his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin.
According to official versions, the disturbed Dutch painter cut off his ear with a razor after a row with Gauguin in 1888. Bleeding heavily, Van Gogh then walked to a brothel and presented the severed ear to an astonished prostitute called Rachel before going home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed.
But two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists' letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth.
In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, published in Germany, Hamburg-based academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans argue that the official version of events, based largely on Gauguin's accounts, contain inconsistencies and that both artists hinted that the truth was more complex.
Van Gogh and Gauguin's troubled friendship was legendary. In 1888, Van Gogh persuaded him to come to Arles in the south of France to live with him in the Yellow House he had set up as a "studio of the south". They spent the autumn painting together before things soured. Just before Christmas, they fell out. Van Gogh, seized by an attack of a metabolic disease became aggressive and was apparently crushed when Gauguin said he was leaving for good.
Kaufmann told the Guardian: "Near the brothel, about 300 metres from the Yellow House, there was a final encounter between them: Vincent might have attacked him, Gauguin wanted to defend himself and to get rid of this 'madman'. He drew his weapon, made some movement in the direction of Vincent and by that cut off his left ear." Kaufmann said it was not clear if it was an accident or an aimed hit.
While curators at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam stand by the theory of self-mutilation, Kaufmann argues that Van Gogh dropped hints in letters to his brother, Theo, once commenting : "Luckily Gauguin ... is not yet armed with machine guns and other dangerous war weapons."
According to official versions, the disturbed Dutch painter cut off his ear with a razor after a row with Gauguin in 1888. Bleeding heavily, Van Gogh then walked to a brothel and presented the severed ear to an astonished prostitute called Rachel before going home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed.
But two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists' letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth.
In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, published in Germany, Hamburg-based academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans argue that the official version of events, based largely on Gauguin's accounts, contain inconsistencies and that both artists hinted that the truth was more complex.
Van Gogh and Gauguin's troubled friendship was legendary. In 1888, Van Gogh persuaded him to come to Arles in the south of France to live with him in the Yellow House he had set up as a "studio of the south". They spent the autumn painting together before things soured. Just before Christmas, they fell out. Van Gogh, seized by an attack of a metabolic disease became aggressive and was apparently crushed when Gauguin said he was leaving for good.
Kaufmann told the Guardian: "Near the brothel, about 300 metres from the Yellow House, there was a final encounter between them: Vincent might have attacked him, Gauguin wanted to defend himself and to get rid of this 'madman'. He drew his weapon, made some movement in the direction of Vincent and by that cut off his left ear." Kaufmann said it was not clear if it was an accident or an aimed hit.
While curators at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam stand by the theory of self-mutilation, Kaufmann argues that Van Gogh dropped hints in letters to his brother, Theo, once commenting : "Luckily Gauguin ... is not yet armed with machine guns and other dangerous war weapons."
Hobbits 'are a separate species'
Scientists have found more evidence that the Indonesian "Hobbit" skeletons belong to a new species of human - and not modern pygmies.
The 3ft (one metre) tall, 30kg (65lbs) humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago.
Since the discovery, researchers have argued vehemently as to the identity of these diminutive people.
Two papers in the journal Nature now support the idea they were an entirely new species of human.
The team, which discovered the tiny remains in Liang Bua cave on Flores, contends that the population belongs to the species Homo floresiensis - separate from our own grouping Homo sapiens .
They argue that the "Hobbits" are descended from a prehistoric species of human - perhaps Homo erectus - which reached island South-East Asia more than a million years ago.
Over many years, their bodies most likely evolved to be smaller in size, through a natural selection process called island dwarfing, claim the discoverers, and many other scientists.
However, some researchers argued that this could not account for the Hobbit's chimp-sized brain of almost 400 cubic cm - a third the size of the modern human brain.
Disease theory
This was a puzzle, they said, because the individuals seem to have crafted complex stone tools.
They said the Hobbits were probably part of a group of modern humans with abnormally small brains.
One team led by William Jungers from Stony Brook University in the US analysed remains of the Hobbit foot.
They found that, in some ways, it is incredibly human. The big toe is aligned with the others and the joints make it possible to extend the toes as the body's full weight falls on the foot, attributes not found in great apes.
But in other respects, it is incredibly primitive. It is far longer than its modern human equivalent, and equipped with a very small big toe, long, curved lateral toes, and a weight-bearing structure that resembles that of a chimpanzee.
So unless the Flores Hobbits became more primitive over time - a rather unlikely scenario - they must have branched off the human line at an even earlier date.
In another study, Eleanor Weston and Adrian Lister of London's Natural History Museum looked at fossils of several species of ancient hippos. They then compared those found on the island of Madagascar with the mainland ancestors from which they evolved.
"It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested," said Dr Weston, a palaeontologist at the museum.
"Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis , and that (it could be) the result of being isolated on the island."
The 3ft (one metre) tall, 30kg (65lbs) humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago.
Since the discovery, researchers have argued vehemently as to the identity of these diminutive people.
Two papers in the journal Nature now support the idea they were an entirely new species of human.
The team, which discovered the tiny remains in Liang Bua cave on Flores, contends that the population belongs to the species Homo floresiensis - separate from our own grouping Homo sapiens .
They argue that the "Hobbits" are descended from a prehistoric species of human - perhaps Homo erectus - which reached island South-East Asia more than a million years ago.
Over many years, their bodies most likely evolved to be smaller in size, through a natural selection process called island dwarfing, claim the discoverers, and many other scientists.
However, some researchers argued that this could not account for the Hobbit's chimp-sized brain of almost 400 cubic cm - a third the size of the modern human brain.
Disease theory
This was a puzzle, they said, because the individuals seem to have crafted complex stone tools.
They said the Hobbits were probably part of a group of modern humans with abnormally small brains.
One team led by William Jungers from Stony Brook University in the US analysed remains of the Hobbit foot.
They found that, in some ways, it is incredibly human. The big toe is aligned with the others and the joints make it possible to extend the toes as the body's full weight falls on the foot, attributes not found in great apes.
But in other respects, it is incredibly primitive. It is far longer than its modern human equivalent, and equipped with a very small big toe, long, curved lateral toes, and a weight-bearing structure that resembles that of a chimpanzee.
So unless the Flores Hobbits became more primitive over time - a rather unlikely scenario - they must have branched off the human line at an even earlier date.
In another study, Eleanor Weston and Adrian Lister of London's Natural History Museum looked at fossils of several species of ancient hippos. They then compared those found on the island of Madagascar with the mainland ancestors from which they evolved.
"It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested," said Dr Weston, a palaeontologist at the museum.
"Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis , and that (it could be) the result of being isolated on the island."
'Ancient text' seized in Israel
Israeli authorities say they have recovered a papyrus document which appears to be nearly 2,000 years old.
The document measures 15cm by 15cm (6in by 6in), and contains 15 lines of ancient Hebrew script.
It appears to be a legal instruction, transferring a widow's property to her late husband's brother.
It was seized from two Palestinian men in a sting operation at a Jerusalem hotel, police said. The two could face several years in jail.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said on Wednesday that the scroll was an "exceptional archeological document, of the like but a few exist," reported Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
It said similar scrolls had been sold worldwide for sums as high as $5-10m (£3.3-6.6m).
Precise dates
According to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the document is written in a style of ancient Hebrew primarily associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
These are scriptures and apocalyptic treatises thought to have been collected by an ascetic Jewish community which lived in the desert near the Dead Sea, and preserved by the dry climate.
But it remains unclear exactly where this document was obtained, said police and archaeologists.
Unusually, the first line of the document indicates a precise date, the IAA said - "Year 4 [AD] to the destruction of Israel", which could indicate either AD74, when Jerusalem's Second Temple was destroyed, or AD139, the date of a Jewish revolt violently put down by Rome.
The document appears to concern the transfer of property belonging to a widow called Miriam.
State property
The IAA's Amir Ganor cautioned that the document would have to undergo laboratory analysis to authenticate it.
Under Israeli law, all archaeological artefacts are state property
But he expressed excitement about the discovery, suggesting that the "very important" document could "shed light on how the people of the period managed their affairs and supplement our knowledge about their way of life".
The two suspects were reportedly apprehended while trying to sell the document, by police and Israeli intelligence officers who had planned the operation for weeks.
According to Israeli antiquities law all archaeological artefacts are state property.
The arrested men could be charged with illegally possessing and trafficking the artefacts, and could face years in jail if convicted
The document measures 15cm by 15cm (6in by 6in), and contains 15 lines of ancient Hebrew script.
It appears to be a legal instruction, transferring a widow's property to her late husband's brother.
It was seized from two Palestinian men in a sting operation at a Jerusalem hotel, police said. The two could face several years in jail.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said on Wednesday that the scroll was an "exceptional archeological document, of the like but a few exist," reported Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
It said similar scrolls had been sold worldwide for sums as high as $5-10m (£3.3-6.6m).
Precise dates
According to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the document is written in a style of ancient Hebrew primarily associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
These are scriptures and apocalyptic treatises thought to have been collected by an ascetic Jewish community which lived in the desert near the Dead Sea, and preserved by the dry climate.
But it remains unclear exactly where this document was obtained, said police and archaeologists.
Unusually, the first line of the document indicates a precise date, the IAA said - "Year 4 [AD] to the destruction of Israel", which could indicate either AD74, when Jerusalem's Second Temple was destroyed, or AD139, the date of a Jewish revolt violently put down by Rome.
The document appears to concern the transfer of property belonging to a widow called Miriam.
State property
The IAA's Amir Ganor cautioned that the document would have to undergo laboratory analysis to authenticate it.
Under Israeli law, all archaeological artefacts are state property
But he expressed excitement about the discovery, suggesting that the "very important" document could "shed light on how the people of the period managed their affairs and supplement our knowledge about their way of life".
The two suspects were reportedly apprehended while trying to sell the document, by police and Israeli intelligence officers who had planned the operation for weeks.
According to Israeli antiquities law all archaeological artefacts are state property.
The arrested men could be charged with illegally possessing and trafficking the artefacts, and could face years in jail if convicted
Officials debate production of H1N1 vaccine
As U.S. health authorities told Congress that they were prepared to mass produce a vaccine against the new H1N1 influenza virus, World Health Organization officials said they would convene an expert committee next week to determine if such production was necessary -- or desirable.
Production of a vaccine against the virus in anticipation of its return next fall might sound like an obvious step, but doing so will sharply limit the amount of seasonal flu vaccine that will be available.
And seasonal flu is a known killer, experts said, leading to an average of 36,000 deaths in the United States each year and tens of thousands more globally.
"We would not want to have no seasonal influenza vaccine," said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research.
The 20 vaccine manufacturers worldwide have an annual production capacity of about 900 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine, she said, and that might be stretched to as many as 2 billion doses of H1N1 vaccine. But that would mean abandoning production of seasonal vaccines in plants that switch to the new vaccine.
She also noted that many questions remain about production of an H1N1 vaccine, including how fast the virus will grow in the eggs that are used as a production medium, what size dose will be required, and whether one dose will suffice.
Because the new virus is so different from circulating strains, and the general public has had no previous exposure to it, many experts believe a booster shot will be necessary in additional to the normal vaccination. If that proves to be the case, it will sharply reduce the number of people who can be immunized.
Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress that researchers have carried out the preliminary phase of vaccine production more rapidly than expected and, "Should we need to manufacture a vaccine, we can work towards that goal very quickly."
Globally, more than 2,000 cases of H1N1 infection have now been confirmed, with Sweden and Poland becoming the most recent countries reporting a case, bringing the tally to 24 countries.
In the United States, 30 new cases in Arizona, 40 in Illinois and scattered cases elsewhere brought the total to 680 confirmed cases.
More details, meanwhile, began to emerge about the death of a Texas woman, the first U.S. citizen whose death has been linked to the new virus. She has been identified as 33-year-old Judy Trunnell, a teacher in Harlingen, Texas, just over the border from Mexico.
She died early Tuesday after being hospitalized April 19, according to Leonel Lopez, the Cameron County epidemiologist. Trunnell was pregnant when she entered the hospital, and the baby was delivered by cesarean section after she fell into a coma.
Health officials said she had "chronic underlying health conditions," but would not give further details and would not say whether her death was a direct result of the flu.
The only other U.S. fatality was a Mexican toddler who died in a Houston hospital last week.
Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the CDC, said that at least 35 people in the United States have been hospitalized with H1N1 flu. The median age was 15, with a range of 8 months to 53 years. Seasonal flu normally strikes the elderly and the very young especially heavily, and officials are at a loss to explain this virus' different age distribution -- one that has been observed in Mexico as well.
One much-bruited possibility is that the elderly retain some vestige of immunity from contact with swine flu viruses that circulated two to four decades ago.
As 136 Mexican nationals who had been quarantined in China returned home on an Aeromexico airliner, Chinese officials said they would also release 28 students and a professor from the University of Montreal who had been held in quarantine in Changchun since Saturday. None of them displayed any symptoms of infection.
Also today, the government of Haiti turned away a Mexican aid ship carrying 77 tons of rice, fertilizer and emergency food kits. Mexican officials said the navy ship's crew had been screened and showed no signs of infection, but the Haitian government requested that it come "on another occasion."
The World Health Organization issued new cautions about pigs Wednesday, seemingly contradicting earlier statements that it is safe to consume pork from infected animals.
"Meat from sick pigs or pigs found dead should not be processed or used for human consumption under any circumstances," Jorgen Schlundt, director of WHO's Department of Food Safety, Zoonoses and Foodborne Diseases, told Reuters.
He also warned that humans could possibly become infected from contact with blood from diseased pigs and that workers processing the animals should wear appropriate protective clothing.
But he also conceded that there is no data available about the survival of the virus on meat or on the infectious dose for humans.
Paul Sundberg, vice president of science and technology for the National Pork Board in the U.S., said that Schlundt is technically correct, but added that current rules already prevent meat from sick pigs or those found dead from entering the food system.
He and others also pointed out that the virus has so far not been found in any pigs other than a herd of about 200 animals in Canada who were infected by their farmer and have subsequently recovered.
Production of a vaccine against the virus in anticipation of its return next fall might sound like an obvious step, but doing so will sharply limit the amount of seasonal flu vaccine that will be available.
And seasonal flu is a known killer, experts said, leading to an average of 36,000 deaths in the United States each year and tens of thousands more globally.
"We would not want to have no seasonal influenza vaccine," said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research.
The 20 vaccine manufacturers worldwide have an annual production capacity of about 900 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine, she said, and that might be stretched to as many as 2 billion doses of H1N1 vaccine. But that would mean abandoning production of seasonal vaccines in plants that switch to the new vaccine.
She also noted that many questions remain about production of an H1N1 vaccine, including how fast the virus will grow in the eggs that are used as a production medium, what size dose will be required, and whether one dose will suffice.
Because the new virus is so different from circulating strains, and the general public has had no previous exposure to it, many experts believe a booster shot will be necessary in additional to the normal vaccination. If that proves to be the case, it will sharply reduce the number of people who can be immunized.
Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress that researchers have carried out the preliminary phase of vaccine production more rapidly than expected and, "Should we need to manufacture a vaccine, we can work towards that goal very quickly."
Globally, more than 2,000 cases of H1N1 infection have now been confirmed, with Sweden and Poland becoming the most recent countries reporting a case, bringing the tally to 24 countries.
In the United States, 30 new cases in Arizona, 40 in Illinois and scattered cases elsewhere brought the total to 680 confirmed cases.
More details, meanwhile, began to emerge about the death of a Texas woman, the first U.S. citizen whose death has been linked to the new virus. She has been identified as 33-year-old Judy Trunnell, a teacher in Harlingen, Texas, just over the border from Mexico.
She died early Tuesday after being hospitalized April 19, according to Leonel Lopez, the Cameron County epidemiologist. Trunnell was pregnant when she entered the hospital, and the baby was delivered by cesarean section after she fell into a coma.
Health officials said she had "chronic underlying health conditions," but would not give further details and would not say whether her death was a direct result of the flu.
The only other U.S. fatality was a Mexican toddler who died in a Houston hospital last week.
Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the CDC, said that at least 35 people in the United States have been hospitalized with H1N1 flu. The median age was 15, with a range of 8 months to 53 years. Seasonal flu normally strikes the elderly and the very young especially heavily, and officials are at a loss to explain this virus' different age distribution -- one that has been observed in Mexico as well.
One much-bruited possibility is that the elderly retain some vestige of immunity from contact with swine flu viruses that circulated two to four decades ago.
As 136 Mexican nationals who had been quarantined in China returned home on an Aeromexico airliner, Chinese officials said they would also release 28 students and a professor from the University of Montreal who had been held in quarantine in Changchun since Saturday. None of them displayed any symptoms of infection.
Also today, the government of Haiti turned away a Mexican aid ship carrying 77 tons of rice, fertilizer and emergency food kits. Mexican officials said the navy ship's crew had been screened and showed no signs of infection, but the Haitian government requested that it come "on another occasion."
The World Health Organization issued new cautions about pigs Wednesday, seemingly contradicting earlier statements that it is safe to consume pork from infected animals.
"Meat from sick pigs or pigs found dead should not be processed or used for human consumption under any circumstances," Jorgen Schlundt, director of WHO's Department of Food Safety, Zoonoses and Foodborne Diseases, told Reuters.
He also warned that humans could possibly become infected from contact with blood from diseased pigs and that workers processing the animals should wear appropriate protective clothing.
But he also conceded that there is no data available about the survival of the virus on meat or on the infectious dose for humans.
Paul Sundberg, vice president of science and technology for the National Pork Board in the U.S., said that Schlundt is technically correct, but added that current rules already prevent meat from sick pigs or those found dead from entering the food system.
He and others also pointed out that the virus has so far not been found in any pigs other than a herd of about 200 animals in Canada who were infected by their farmer and have subsequently recovered.
NASA's program for future spaceflight to be reviewed
In a major turnaround, the Obama administration intends this week to order a review of the spacecraft program that NASA had hoped would replace the space shuttle, the Orlando Sentinel has learned.
According to administration officials and industry insiders, the review would examine whether the Ares 1 rocket and Orion capsule are the best option to send astronauts into orbit by 2015. The review of the so-called Constellation program could be finished by fall.
The decision follows months of critical reports that have questioned whether Ares and Orion can overcome major financial and technical hurdles that threaten to delay a scheduled 2015 launch to the International Space Station and a return to the moon by 2020.
The outcome is crucial for Kennedy Space Center, which could lose as many as 10,000 jobs if the shuttle is retired in 2010 as scheduled. That would leave a five-year gap before the first Ares launch. Proponents of alternative rocket designs say they could be launched sooner and save many jobs.
"I don't think they [White House officials] are completely convinced that the Constellation program, as designed, is the best way to go," said Vincent G. Sabathier, a space expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
Sabathier said that the White House had wanted to name a new administrator before announcing the study, but that the difficulty in finding a leader and the shuttle's looming retirement forced the administration's hand.
"They want to mitigate the gap," between programs, Sabathier said.
The announcement is planned for Thursday to coincide with the release of President Obama's $18.7-billion spending plan for NASA.
Obama has said little about NASA since taking office, other than noting this spring that the agency was afflicted by a "sense of drift." NASA has not had a permanent administrator since January, when former chief Michael Griffin resigned.
Obama's budget summary released in February backed President George W. Bush's plan to retire the shuttle in 2010. But it did not specifically support Constellation.
Ares' woes are well known. It requires re-engineering to deal with violent shaking caused by vibrations in its solid-rocket first stage. In addition, engineers are concerned that the rocket could drift into its launch tower on takeoff. And Ares' estimated costs through 2015 have risen from $28 billion in 2006 to more than $40 billion today.
Recently, NASA announced that it would cut the Orion capsule's passenger capacity from six astronauts to four. Originally, Orion was to fly six astronauts to the space station and four to the moon. But because Ares I is less powerful and more expensive than originally planned, NASA has had to cut weight and costs from Orion.
The study that set NASA on its current course was ordered by Griffin in 2005. But many contractors and rocket companies complained that the study was not fairly conducted.
"I think the people who are going to oversee this want to take another hard look at this," said Roger Launius, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum. "And there are people in some quarters, not all, who say that the study done in 2005 might have been shaded in such a way to lead you to the current architecture" and the administration now wants to take a look at whether Constellation is the right answer.
According to administration officials and industry insiders, the review would examine whether the Ares 1 rocket and Orion capsule are the best option to send astronauts into orbit by 2015. The review of the so-called Constellation program could be finished by fall.
The decision follows months of critical reports that have questioned whether Ares and Orion can overcome major financial and technical hurdles that threaten to delay a scheduled 2015 launch to the International Space Station and a return to the moon by 2020.
The outcome is crucial for Kennedy Space Center, which could lose as many as 10,000 jobs if the shuttle is retired in 2010 as scheduled. That would leave a five-year gap before the first Ares launch. Proponents of alternative rocket designs say they could be launched sooner and save many jobs.
"I don't think they [White House officials] are completely convinced that the Constellation program, as designed, is the best way to go," said Vincent G. Sabathier, a space expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
Sabathier said that the White House had wanted to name a new administrator before announcing the study, but that the difficulty in finding a leader and the shuttle's looming retirement forced the administration's hand.
"They want to mitigate the gap," between programs, Sabathier said.
The announcement is planned for Thursday to coincide with the release of President Obama's $18.7-billion spending plan for NASA.
Obama has said little about NASA since taking office, other than noting this spring that the agency was afflicted by a "sense of drift." NASA has not had a permanent administrator since January, when former chief Michael Griffin resigned.
Obama's budget summary released in February backed President George W. Bush's plan to retire the shuttle in 2010. But it did not specifically support Constellation.
Ares' woes are well known. It requires re-engineering to deal with violent shaking caused by vibrations in its solid-rocket first stage. In addition, engineers are concerned that the rocket could drift into its launch tower on takeoff. And Ares' estimated costs through 2015 have risen from $28 billion in 2006 to more than $40 billion today.
Recently, NASA announced that it would cut the Orion capsule's passenger capacity from six astronauts to four. Originally, Orion was to fly six astronauts to the space station and four to the moon. But because Ares I is less powerful and more expensive than originally planned, NASA has had to cut weight and costs from Orion.
The study that set NASA on its current course was ordered by Griffin in 2005. But many contractors and rocket companies complained that the study was not fairly conducted.
"I think the people who are going to oversee this want to take another hard look at this," said Roger Launius, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum. "And there are people in some quarters, not all, who say that the study done in 2005 might have been shaded in such a way to lead you to the current architecture" and the administration now wants to take a look at whether Constellation is the right answer.
Drugs Hollow Out Afghan Lives in Cultural Center
The men, hollow-eyed and matted, start coming at dawn, shuffling into the remains of the old Soviet Cultural Center, which in its day staged films celebrating the glories of a new era.
In Kabul, Aziza smoked opium at home as her children watched. More Photos »
These days, the shell of the abandoned building serves as perhaps the world’s largest gathering spot for men looking to satisfy their lust for heroin and opium. Stooping in the darkened caverns of the place, amid the waste and exhalations of hundreds of others, the men partake of the drug that has begun to wreak its deathly magic in the very country where it is produced.
One such man, who called himself Mohammed Ofzal, struck a match beneath a piece of foil and sucked in the blue smoke that rose from the liquefying little mass. Then he sat back in a crouch, legs shaking a little. His eyes, glazed and half-shut, stared blankly at the floor.
“My parents are fed up with me; they are telling me to quit,” Mr. Ofzal said. He said he was 18. His clothes, unlike nearly everyone else’s in the gathering post, were pressed and clean. He said he would go home soon; he would not be spending the night. “If you don’t take care of yourself, you could die here.”
Around him were a hundred other men, some crouching, some collapsed, some unconscious; some, perhaps, were dead. The visitors, though not the denizens, covered their faces from the smell. Mr. Ofzal lit another match and bent down to drink in the smoke.
Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium, is drowning in a sea of its own making. While the country’s narco-traffickers ship vast quantities of the stuff to Europe and the United States, enough of it stays behind to offer a cheap and easy temptation to the people at home. A United Nations survey taken four years ago revealed 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in a population of about 35 million; a new study, to be completed in the summer, is expected to show even more.
Addiction in Afghanistan is rising along with the country’s opium production, which is cranking at something close to fever pitch. With much of its society and many of its institutions ruined by 30 years of fighting, Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world’s opium. The money earned from narcotics accounts for more than half of the country’s gross domestic product. It feeds the Taliban insurgency.
The Soviet Culture Center is the most public of arenas in which to view the trade’s depredations on ordinary people. (For the men, that is; the center, like virtually every other public place in Afghanistan, is strictly segregated by sex.) The building sits in the Dehamatzang neighborhood of western Kabul, the scene of ferocious and prolonged fighting during the civil war that engulfed the country in the 1990s. The exterior walls are crumbled and pockmarked with bullet holes.
Inside is a landscape of extraordinary human wreckage. The rooms resemble catacombs; lightless and fetid and crammed with dozens, even hundreds, of bodies, each one clinging to his bit of space, his bit of elixir. Clouds of blue smoke rise, linger and dissolve. Almost no one speaks. In a corner, a man, seated on the floor, offers candy and cigarettes. In an ordinary day, 2,000 men pass through here. That’s on top of the nearly 600 who never leave. “Did you bring any money?” one of the men asked, as hunched and withered as a gargoyle.
“No,” said another, slipping his friend a tiny packet.
Next to them a body slumped in an improbable pose — curled, stiff, yet balanced, delicately, as if on the head of a pin. After a time the body fell over, as frozen as before. No one looked up.
Men and boys are not the only people who have fallen prey to the drug; women and girls are merely harder to find. Typically, females, prohibited from wandering the streets, stay indoors, which mitigates their helplessness but shields them from help.
A woman named Aziza, for instance, lives at home with her six children, who range in age from 18 months to 21. Aziza, who like many Afghans has only one name, is a gaunt and reduced figure, possibly beautiful once, but now a woman of papery skin and sunken cheeks and eyes sunk deep in her skull. For Aziza, as for many here, smoking opium is a way to escape a life without hope.
Two years ago, Aziza’s husband died in a car accident, and with no way of supporting her family on her own — women in this deeply conservative society do not generally work outside the home — she fell into despair. One day, a friend offered her a pipe and opium. She took it. Since then, Aziza has been smoking two or three times a day, sometimes in front of her children.
“Opium has been a good friend to me; it has taken away my sorrows,” Aziza said, seated in the corner of her one-room house, with her children looking on.
Kabul contains a tiny handful of clinics that treat drug abuse, but they have nowhere near the capacity to treat the number of people in need. About six months ago, the counselors from one clinic, alerted by the neighbors, found Aziza in her home and invited her to the clinic. Aziza stayed for 24 hours.
“When I need it, it is a kind of an attack,” she said afterward. “I can’t resist the opium; it is stronger than I am.”
With her children standing by, Aziza reached into a cloth bag and produced a filthy spoon, a bit of powder and a straw. Her 6-year-old son, Mirwais, stood to his mother’s left, 10-year-old Sonia stood to her right. Aziza, eyes glazed, struck a match but could produce no spark. She tried again and failed. Finally, Sonia took the box from her mother’s hands, struck a flame and handed the match to her mother.
Aziza bent over and breathed in the blue smoke.
In Kabul, Aziza smoked opium at home as her children watched. More Photos »
These days, the shell of the abandoned building serves as perhaps the world’s largest gathering spot for men looking to satisfy their lust for heroin and opium. Stooping in the darkened caverns of the place, amid the waste and exhalations of hundreds of others, the men partake of the drug that has begun to wreak its deathly magic in the very country where it is produced.
One such man, who called himself Mohammed Ofzal, struck a match beneath a piece of foil and sucked in the blue smoke that rose from the liquefying little mass. Then he sat back in a crouch, legs shaking a little. His eyes, glazed and half-shut, stared blankly at the floor.
“My parents are fed up with me; they are telling me to quit,” Mr. Ofzal said. He said he was 18. His clothes, unlike nearly everyone else’s in the gathering post, were pressed and clean. He said he would go home soon; he would not be spending the night. “If you don’t take care of yourself, you could die here.”
Around him were a hundred other men, some crouching, some collapsed, some unconscious; some, perhaps, were dead. The visitors, though not the denizens, covered their faces from the smell. Mr. Ofzal lit another match and bent down to drink in the smoke.
Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium, is drowning in a sea of its own making. While the country’s narco-traffickers ship vast quantities of the stuff to Europe and the United States, enough of it stays behind to offer a cheap and easy temptation to the people at home. A United Nations survey taken four years ago revealed 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in a population of about 35 million; a new study, to be completed in the summer, is expected to show even more.
Addiction in Afghanistan is rising along with the country’s opium production, which is cranking at something close to fever pitch. With much of its society and many of its institutions ruined by 30 years of fighting, Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world’s opium. The money earned from narcotics accounts for more than half of the country’s gross domestic product. It feeds the Taliban insurgency.
The Soviet Culture Center is the most public of arenas in which to view the trade’s depredations on ordinary people. (For the men, that is; the center, like virtually every other public place in Afghanistan, is strictly segregated by sex.) The building sits in the Dehamatzang neighborhood of western Kabul, the scene of ferocious and prolonged fighting during the civil war that engulfed the country in the 1990s. The exterior walls are crumbled and pockmarked with bullet holes.
Inside is a landscape of extraordinary human wreckage. The rooms resemble catacombs; lightless and fetid and crammed with dozens, even hundreds, of bodies, each one clinging to his bit of space, his bit of elixir. Clouds of blue smoke rise, linger and dissolve. Almost no one speaks. In a corner, a man, seated on the floor, offers candy and cigarettes. In an ordinary day, 2,000 men pass through here. That’s on top of the nearly 600 who never leave. “Did you bring any money?” one of the men asked, as hunched and withered as a gargoyle.
“No,” said another, slipping his friend a tiny packet.
Next to them a body slumped in an improbable pose — curled, stiff, yet balanced, delicately, as if on the head of a pin. After a time the body fell over, as frozen as before. No one looked up.
Men and boys are not the only people who have fallen prey to the drug; women and girls are merely harder to find. Typically, females, prohibited from wandering the streets, stay indoors, which mitigates their helplessness but shields them from help.
A woman named Aziza, for instance, lives at home with her six children, who range in age from 18 months to 21. Aziza, who like many Afghans has only one name, is a gaunt and reduced figure, possibly beautiful once, but now a woman of papery skin and sunken cheeks and eyes sunk deep in her skull. For Aziza, as for many here, smoking opium is a way to escape a life without hope.
Two years ago, Aziza’s husband died in a car accident, and with no way of supporting her family on her own — women in this deeply conservative society do not generally work outside the home — she fell into despair. One day, a friend offered her a pipe and opium. She took it. Since then, Aziza has been smoking two or three times a day, sometimes in front of her children.
“Opium has been a good friend to me; it has taken away my sorrows,” Aziza said, seated in the corner of her one-room house, with her children looking on.
Kabul contains a tiny handful of clinics that treat drug abuse, but they have nowhere near the capacity to treat the number of people in need. About six months ago, the counselors from one clinic, alerted by the neighbors, found Aziza in her home and invited her to the clinic. Aziza stayed for 24 hours.
“When I need it, it is a kind of an attack,” she said afterward. “I can’t resist the opium; it is stronger than I am.”
With her children standing by, Aziza reached into a cloth bag and produced a filthy spoon, a bit of powder and a straw. Her 6-year-old son, Mirwais, stood to his mother’s left, 10-year-old Sonia stood to her right. Aziza, eyes glazed, struck a match but could produce no spark. She tried again and failed. Finally, Sonia took the box from her mother’s hands, struck a flame and handed the match to her mother.
Aziza bent over and breathed in the blue smoke.
With Taliban Threat Rising, Obama Presses Visiting Allies
President Obama said on Wednesday that the United States is deeply committed to helping Afghanistan and Pakistan defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist partners and in helping democracy endure and flourish in those countries.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke about her meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan on Wednesday in Washington.
The president said America’s “lasting commitment” to the stability of the two countries must not, and would not, waver even though there will surely be more violence and setbacks before the forces of terrorism are subdued.
“We meet today as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future,” the president said.
Mr. Obama spoke after meeting with Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan amid a day of conferences that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said was producing “some very promising early signs.”
The challenges for the United States in the region were underscored Wednesday by reports of dozens of civilian deaths from American airstrikes in western Afghanistan. Mr. Obama, who was flanked by the two presidents as he spoke late in the afternoon, said that the United States would “make every effort to avoid civilian casualties as we help the Afghan government combat our common enemy.”
The focus was on ways that Afghanistan and Pakistan, both unstable and strategically vital, could work with one another, and with the United States, to fight the militants who plague both countries. The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on Pakistan, in particular, to crack down on the Taliban in the western part of the country, near its porous border with Afghanistan.
“Our strategy reflects a fundamental truth,” President Obama said. “The security of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States are linked.”
Mrs. Clinton made much the same point at an earlier briefing, suggesting that it would not be incorrect to think of Pakistan and Afghanistan as “conjoined twins” that cannot be dealt with separately as the United States tries to help each tame the forces that spawn terrorism and violence.
“The confidence-building that is necessary for this relationship to turn into tangible cooperation is moving forward,” Mrs. Clinton said. . “And I think today’s series of meetings is another step along that road.”
President Obama and Secretary Clinton described the three-way talks as focusing not just on military and diplomatic moves, but on attempts to shore up the pillars of society in Afghanistan and Pakistan — by “developing alternatives to the drug trade” in Afghanistan, as Mr. Obama put it in alluding to the traditional poppy-and-opium trade, and fostering grass-roots democracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mrs. Clinton’s comments, while general and cautious, reflected her own meeting in the morning with Presidents Karzai and Zardari. Based on that session, she said, “the level of cooperation between the governments of the two countries is increasing.”
While Mrs. Clinton said she could not be too specific until after the two days of talks are concluded, she tried to dispel any notion that the conferences would produce little concrete progress. “I told each that coming out of this trilateral meeting, we will basically have work plans,” she said. “We’re going to be very specific. We don’t want any misunderstanding. We don’t want any mixed signals.”
The secretary also said she was “quite impressed” by the Pakistani government’s renewed efforts against the Taliban, efforts that followed harsh criticism by Washington of the leaders in Islamabad. She credited Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders for changing their perspective “in order to be able to see this threat as those of us on the outside perceived it.”
Congressional leaders and administration officials have expressed increased concern over the deteriorating situation in Pakistan, where insurgents have taken over territory just 60 miles from the capital.
Earlier, Mrs. Clinton expressed deep regret for the loss of innocent life at a news conference with Mr. Karzai and Mr. Zardari held at the State Department.
Mrs. Clinton and the administration’s top envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, held an unscheduled meeting early Wednesday with Mr. Zardari. The three huddled for an hour at Mr. Zardari’s hotel, the Willard, where they discussed steps which the administration wants the government to take to deal with the Taliban insurgency, according to officials from both countries with knowledge of the meeting.
Offering her perspective, Mrs. Clinton said she had reaffirmed with Mr. Zardari “our government’s strong support for him, as the democratically elected president.”
“Being able to say ‘democratically elected president of Pakistan’ is not a common phrase,” said Mrs. Clinton, who put in a surprise appearance at the White House news room. “And I think it’s imperative that we support President Zardari and work with him, as he extends the reach of the government, not only on security, as essential as that is, but also on the range of needs of the Pakistani people.”
With President Karzai, it was a very future-oriented conversation,” Mrs. Clinton went on. “We talked about the necessity to take real, concrete actions to make the kind of progress that Afghanistan desperately needs to see, to really deliver for the people of the country. In both meetings, I thought, each president was very forthcoming.”
Speaking at the earlier State Department news conference, Mr. Zardari said that his government would act. “My democracy will deliver,” he said. “We are up to the challenge.” He alluded to the United States’ own lengthy efforts to stabilize countries in the region. “Just as the United States is making progress after seven years of engagement in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we too will make progress,” Mr. Zardari said.
In his remarks, Mr. Zardari alluded to the assassination of his wife, the former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who was shot and killed after a rally in Rawalpindi in 2007. “Democracy will avenge the death of my wife, and the thousands of Pakistani citizens around the world,” he said.
The Willard Hotel session — held in advance of more formal meetings at the State Department and the White House — underscored the concern that has gripped the Obama administration as Taliban insurgents battle government troops closer and closer to Islamabad.
Administration officials are worried that the Zardari government will make promises in Washington to do more to contain the insurgents, but may not follow through once officials are back in Islamabad. Senior members of the Obama administration have been forthright in the last week about their concern that the Pakistani Army is overly pre-occupied with its traditional foe to the east, India, when the Taliban is taking over the western part of the country.
Mrs. Clinton also used her public remarks to announce a trade and transit accord to improve commerce between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which the leaders of the two countries agreed to conclude by the end of the year. Mrs. Clinton called the accord “an important milestone in their efforts to generate foreign investment, stronger economic growth and trade opportunities.”
The deadline of the end of this year to conclude the pact is notable because the two countries have been in talks on this agreement for more than four decades.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke about her meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan on Wednesday in Washington.
The president said America’s “lasting commitment” to the stability of the two countries must not, and would not, waver even though there will surely be more violence and setbacks before the forces of terrorism are subdued.
“We meet today as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future,” the president said.
Mr. Obama spoke after meeting with Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan amid a day of conferences that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said was producing “some very promising early signs.”
The challenges for the United States in the region were underscored Wednesday by reports of dozens of civilian deaths from American airstrikes in western Afghanistan. Mr. Obama, who was flanked by the two presidents as he spoke late in the afternoon, said that the United States would “make every effort to avoid civilian casualties as we help the Afghan government combat our common enemy.”
The focus was on ways that Afghanistan and Pakistan, both unstable and strategically vital, could work with one another, and with the United States, to fight the militants who plague both countries. The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on Pakistan, in particular, to crack down on the Taliban in the western part of the country, near its porous border with Afghanistan.
“Our strategy reflects a fundamental truth,” President Obama said. “The security of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States are linked.”
Mrs. Clinton made much the same point at an earlier briefing, suggesting that it would not be incorrect to think of Pakistan and Afghanistan as “conjoined twins” that cannot be dealt with separately as the United States tries to help each tame the forces that spawn terrorism and violence.
“The confidence-building that is necessary for this relationship to turn into tangible cooperation is moving forward,” Mrs. Clinton said. . “And I think today’s series of meetings is another step along that road.”
President Obama and Secretary Clinton described the three-way talks as focusing not just on military and diplomatic moves, but on attempts to shore up the pillars of society in Afghanistan and Pakistan — by “developing alternatives to the drug trade” in Afghanistan, as Mr. Obama put it in alluding to the traditional poppy-and-opium trade, and fostering grass-roots democracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mrs. Clinton’s comments, while general and cautious, reflected her own meeting in the morning with Presidents Karzai and Zardari. Based on that session, she said, “the level of cooperation between the governments of the two countries is increasing.”
While Mrs. Clinton said she could not be too specific until after the two days of talks are concluded, she tried to dispel any notion that the conferences would produce little concrete progress. “I told each that coming out of this trilateral meeting, we will basically have work plans,” she said. “We’re going to be very specific. We don’t want any misunderstanding. We don’t want any mixed signals.”
The secretary also said she was “quite impressed” by the Pakistani government’s renewed efforts against the Taliban, efforts that followed harsh criticism by Washington of the leaders in Islamabad. She credited Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders for changing their perspective “in order to be able to see this threat as those of us on the outside perceived it.”
Congressional leaders and administration officials have expressed increased concern over the deteriorating situation in Pakistan, where insurgents have taken over territory just 60 miles from the capital.
Earlier, Mrs. Clinton expressed deep regret for the loss of innocent life at a news conference with Mr. Karzai and Mr. Zardari held at the State Department.
Mrs. Clinton and the administration’s top envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, held an unscheduled meeting early Wednesday with Mr. Zardari. The three huddled for an hour at Mr. Zardari’s hotel, the Willard, where they discussed steps which the administration wants the government to take to deal with the Taliban insurgency, according to officials from both countries with knowledge of the meeting.
Offering her perspective, Mrs. Clinton said she had reaffirmed with Mr. Zardari “our government’s strong support for him, as the democratically elected president.”
“Being able to say ‘democratically elected president of Pakistan’ is not a common phrase,” said Mrs. Clinton, who put in a surprise appearance at the White House news room. “And I think it’s imperative that we support President Zardari and work with him, as he extends the reach of the government, not only on security, as essential as that is, but also on the range of needs of the Pakistani people.”
With President Karzai, it was a very future-oriented conversation,” Mrs. Clinton went on. “We talked about the necessity to take real, concrete actions to make the kind of progress that Afghanistan desperately needs to see, to really deliver for the people of the country. In both meetings, I thought, each president was very forthcoming.”
Speaking at the earlier State Department news conference, Mr. Zardari said that his government would act. “My democracy will deliver,” he said. “We are up to the challenge.” He alluded to the United States’ own lengthy efforts to stabilize countries in the region. “Just as the United States is making progress after seven years of engagement in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we too will make progress,” Mr. Zardari said.
In his remarks, Mr. Zardari alluded to the assassination of his wife, the former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who was shot and killed after a rally in Rawalpindi in 2007. “Democracy will avenge the death of my wife, and the thousands of Pakistani citizens around the world,” he said.
The Willard Hotel session — held in advance of more formal meetings at the State Department and the White House — underscored the concern that has gripped the Obama administration as Taliban insurgents battle government troops closer and closer to Islamabad.
Administration officials are worried that the Zardari government will make promises in Washington to do more to contain the insurgents, but may not follow through once officials are back in Islamabad. Senior members of the Obama administration have been forthright in the last week about their concern that the Pakistani Army is overly pre-occupied with its traditional foe to the east, India, when the Taliban is taking over the western part of the country.
Mrs. Clinton also used her public remarks to announce a trade and transit accord to improve commerce between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which the leaders of the two countries agreed to conclude by the end of the year. Mrs. Clinton called the accord “an important milestone in their efforts to generate foreign investment, stronger economic growth and trade opportunities.”
The deadline of the end of this year to conclude the pact is notable because the two countries have been in talks on this agreement for more than four decades.
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