The head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was enchanted by former Chinese Vice Premier Li Lanqing’s seal-cutting exhibition on Wednesday.
UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura made this comment while he was paying a visit to the exhibition at the Chinese Culture Center in Paris.
Roaming the aisle where seal-cutting works and introduction pictures were displayed, Matsuura frequently stopped to pore over every Chinese character that looked familiar to him. He also discussed the similarity between Chinese and Japanese writings with his companions.
After leaving a note in Japanese which called the exhibit “magnificent,” Matsuura told Xinhua that the display was very impressive.
He added that it was “incredible” for Li to have made such great and numerous achievements in art — Li has produced over 400pieces of seal cuttings in just five years.
The exhibition, co-organized by the Chinese Culture Ministry and the Chinese embassy in France, opened on Oct. 9 and runs through Nov. 14. More than 270 seals made by Li are on display.
Seal-cutting, or ‘Zhuanke’ in Chinese, is a traditional art form that combines calligraphy and carving.
This art form, which dates back more than 3,000 years to the Yin Dynasty, is one of the four essential skills required of an ancient Chinese scholar, along with calligraphy, painting and poetry.
Former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin visited Li’s exhibition on Monday.
North Korea claimed Tuesday that it has successfully weaponized more plutonium for atomic bombs, a day after warning Washington to agree quickly to direct talks or face the prospect of a growing North Korean nuclear arsenal.
The announcement underlined Pyongyang’s impatience over securing one-on-one talks with Washington, as well as the difficulties in dealing with a regime that resorts to threats and provocations to get what it wants.
Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said North Korea had finished reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, which experts say would provide enough weapons-grade plutonium for at least one more nuclear bomb.
The claim may not mean much, since North Korea is believed to already have enough weaponized plutonium for half a dozen nuclear weapons. But the timing — a day after Pyongyang warned it would beef up its nuclear arsenal if the U.S. refused to agree on bilateral talks — shows the communist regime is flexing its atomic might to push Washington to act, analysts said.
“North Korea is trying to show off its nuclear might as a way to pressure the United States to agree to the talks,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University.
U.S. State Deparment spokesman Ian Kelly accused the Pyongyang government of violating its past commitments at international disarmament talks.
“Reprocessing plutonium is contrary to North Korea’s own commitments” at those negotiations and violates United Nations resolutions, Kelly told reporters in Washington. He said the Obama administration was focused on trying to restart stalled six-nation nuclear talks.
North Korea has long sought direct nuclear negotiations with the U.S., believing that it is the easiest, fastest and surefire way of ensuring the survival of the totalitarian regime and win economic concessions to rebuild its moribund economy.
On Monday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry warned that “if the U.S. is not ready to sit at a negotiating table with the (North), it will go its own way,” an apparent threat to bolster its nuclear arsenal.
Pyongyang has claimed it needs atomic weapons to defend itself against the U.S., which fought against the North during the Korean War in the 1950s and has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea to protect the ally.
The U.S. says it has no intention of attacking the North.
But the North said Tuesday that it remains “compelled to take measures to bolster its deterrent for self-defense to cope with the increasing nuclear threat and military provocations of the hostile forces.”
Washington has said it is willing to meet one-on-one with the North if the talks lead to the resumption of the six-nation negotiations involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the U.S.
However, discussions between a North Korean envoy and a U.S. official last week did not yield an agreement to hold talks, both sides said.
Kelly told reporters Monday that Sung Kim, the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, recently had useful discussions with Ri Gun, North Korea’s No. 2 official for nuclear talks. He said the U.S. is still considering North Korea’s offer.
North Korea agreed in 2007 to disable its main nuclear facility in Yongbyon — a step toward its ultimate dismantlement — in exchange for much-needed energy aid and political concessions. However, Pyongyang halted that process more than a year ago and later abandoned the pact amid international censure for a series of nuclear and missile tests.
North Korean officials restarted the nuclear facilities in April in retaliation for a U.N. rebuke of a rocket launch widely criticized as an illicit test of its long-range missile technology. The country also kicked out international nuclear monitors.
The North then conducted its second-ever nuclear test in May and later launched a series of banned ballistic missile tests, prompting the U.N. Security Council to toughen sanctions against the regime.
In September, North Korea said it was in the final stage of reprocessing spent fuel rods, and claimed it had succeeded in enriching uranium, a process that would give the regime a second way to build atomic bombs.
Tuesday’s announcement was designed to hurry along negotiations, analysts said.
“North Korea is pressuring the United States to decide quickly whether it wants to resolve the standoff through bilateral talks or allow the (plutonium) to be used for atomic weapons,” North Korea expert Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University said.
He lies in a bed on a balloon-type mattress, to reduce pressure on his burned body. He is covered with bandages; a ventilator breathes for Michael Brewer because he can’t do it for himself.
He’s hooked up to the marvels of modern medicine that are trying to give the 15-year-old burn victim a chance to be a kid once again.
Sixty-five percent of his body is covered with second- and third-degree burns.
“People are writing horror stories … but people just can’t imagine the kind of sickness we’re talking about,” said Dr. Nicholas Namias, medical director of the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital Burn Center in Miami.
“I’ve been to movies like everyone else, and Hollywood hasn’t even thought of something like this,” Namias said.
Brewer is heavily sedated, and the ventilator does not allow him to speak. His open wounds are covered by bandages, which are changed daily. It’s a four-hour process.
He has not been able to speak with police since his desperate fight for life began October 12, when police say five teenage friends, including a 13-year-old, doused Brewer with rubbing alcohol and set him on fire.
The attack occurred after Brewer reported to police that one of the youths had stolen his father’s bicycle. Police say the bicycle was stolen because Brewer did not pay one of the boys $40 for a video game.
According to police, witnesses said the teens called Brewer “a snitch” as they used a lighter to set him ablaze.
Namias explained how Brewer’s organs are not functioning the way they should be, but that is expected at this early stage of recovery.
“He’s still on the ventilator and advanced modes of mechanical ventilation. We are breathing for him. His contribution to the breathing is trivial,” Namias said.
Last week’s big selloff did more than just rattle investors: it put an end to a seven-month win streak that had pushed the S&P 500 more than 60% above the March lows.
While the monthly decline was small — less than 2% — it emerged after a tumultuous week dictated by a stronger dollar, sliding energy and financial issues, and a variety of quarterly financial reports. A stronger-than-expected rise in third-quarter GDP growth — the strongest sign yet that the recession is over — provoked a one-day rally and nothing more.
“The underlying fundamentals look good,” said David Chalupnik, head of equities at First American Funds. “But there’s still a lot of worry in this market, which we saw this week.”
He said the week ahead should be better, but it may be muted as investors wait for Friday’s big jobs report.
“Right now the market is all about jobs and the consumer,” said Kelli Hill, portfolio manager at Ashfield Capital Partners. “While GDP is growing, the consumer is hurting.”
Weak consumer confidence, sluggish spending and the still-deteriorating labor market are all creating worries about what a recovery will look like beyond the near term. Government stimulus programs such as Cash for Clunkers and the tax breaks for first-time home buyers have helped, but are short term fixes. Investors are concerned about what a recovery will look like without the help.
“There’s growth and resilience in productivity, but people are still losing their jobs,” she said.
Jobs: The state of the labor market moves front and center on Wall Street in the week ahead, with a number of reports on joblessness in October on tap. The government’s non-farm payrolls report on Friday is likely the highlight.
Employers are expected to have cut 166,000 from their payrolls after cutting 263,000 in September, according to a consensus of economists surveyed by Briefing.com. The unemployment rate is expected to drift ever closer to 10%, hitting 9.9%.
On Wednesday, the Senate is expected to vote to extend unemployment benefits.
Other economic events to keep an eye on during the week include October auto and truck sales, due Tuesday, and the weekly jobless claims and October chain store sales, both due Thursday. For a more detailed look at this week’s economic news, see the chart.
Federal Reserve: The central bank meets Tuesday and Wednesday with a decision on interest rates and a statement due out Wednesday afternoon. The Fed is widely expected to hold the fed funds rate, a key overnight bank lending rate, at historic lows near zero, as a means of supporting a still-tentative economic recovery.
In its closely watched statement, the Fed could provide hints as to when, later this year or early next, it plans to start removing the trillions in stimulus it put into the system as the financial crisis took hold. The bankers are not expected to lift interest rates until sometime next year.
Quarterly results: With roughly 344 companies, or 69% of the S&P 500 having reported results, profits are currently on track to have fallen 17.5% versus a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters.
That makes the third quarter the ninth consecutive quarter of declining profits, the longest stretch since Thomson began calculating the information a decade ago.
However, the percentage of companies reporting upside surprises is at an all-time high of 80%, with just 6% meeting forecasts and 13% missing forecasts.
Revenue is currently on track to have fallen about 10.7% versus a year ago.
Next week brings a smaller number of market-moving quarterly results, including Dow components Cisco Systems ( Read the rest of this entry »
Rescuers were still searching Saturday for nine people missing in the Pacific off the southern California coast after a Coast Guard plane and a Marine helicopter collided Thursday night.
“The search effort has saturated an area totaling 644 square miles and includes surface and air assets from the Coast Guard, Navy, Marine Corps and Customs Border Protection Air/Marine Branch,” the Coast Guard said Saturday in a statement.
“The search has been continuous since the collision occurred at approximately 7 p.m. Thursday.”
Marine Corps Air Station Miramar identified the Marine pilots of the AH-1W Super Cobra as Maj. Samuel Leigh and 1st Lt. Thomas Claiborne, both with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 469.
They were conducting routine training about 15 miles off San Clemente Island when they collided with the U.S. Coast Guard C-130.
The Coast Guard identified its seven missing personnel as Lt. Cmdr. Che J. Barnes of Capay, California, aircraft commander; Lt. Adam W. Bryant of Crewe, Virginia, co-pilot; Chief Petty Officer John F. Seidman of Stockton, California, flight engineer; Petty Officer 2nd Class Carl P. Grigonis of Mayfield Heights, Ohio, navigator; Petty Officer 2nd Class Monica L. Beacham of Decaturville, Tennessee, radio operator; Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason S. Moletzsky of Norristown, Pennsylvania, air crew; Petty Officer 3rd Class Danny R. Kreder II of Elm Mott, Texas, drop master.
They are stationed at Coast Guard Air Station Sacramento, California, where their aircraft is based.
A pilot reported seeing a fireball about 7:10 p.m. Thursday near the crash site.
U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Joseph Castillo said Friday that an investigation with the Marine Corps to determine what happened was beginning.
A large debris field has been located, and debris has been collected, he said. The two Marines on the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton chopper were one of four helicopter crews involved in the training exercise.
The Coast Guard plane had been on a search mission for a couple of days before Thursday’s crash.
“They were searching for a possible person in the water who was reported to have gotten in a dinghy and attempted to row to Catalina [Island],” Coast Guard Capt. Thomas Farris told reporters Friday. “We were searching in that area because of the drift that would have naturally occurred after that event.”
With water temperatures in the 60s, Farris estimated that survivability could be up to 20 hours.
The missing person the Coast Guard members were searching for is still missing, Farris said.
Turkish State Minister for Foreign Trade Zafer Caglayan said Friday that two more border passes would be opened with Iraq by the end of 2010, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
The move came in accordance with a memorandum of understanding for the opening of the two more border crossings, Caglayan was quoted as saying.
Caglayan said busy traffic in Turkish-Iraqi border passes caused delays, noting that Turkey and Iraq signed the memorandum of understanding to overcome the delays and contribute to trade.
The Turkish minister also said establishment of a common logistic center was also on the agenda, adding, “Turkey will extend support to establishment of a free zone in Iraq.”
President Barack Obama landed at a U.S. military base early on Thursday to meet the plane bringing home the bodies of 18 American soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed in Afghanistan this week.
The previously unannounced late-night trip comes as Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan to fight an insurgency that has reached its fiercest level in eight years. This month has been the deadliest for U.S. forces since the start of the war eight years ago.
Obama, flying in his Marine One presidential helicopter, landed shortly after midnight in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, home of the United States’ largest military mortuary and main point of entry for U.S. service members killed abroad.
Minutes earlier, an Air Force C-17 transport aircraft landed in the base, carrying the bodies of eight Army soldiers killed by a roadside bomb and seven soldiers and three DEA agents killed in a helicopter crash, according to the military.
It was the first time Obama has made the trip as president to Dover, where as the caskets are unloaded from the transport plane, he will see first hand the human cost of the unpopular war he inherited from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and which analysts say will likely help define his presidency.
Obama traveled with only a small media pool to Dover, and journalists accompanying him were restricted from reporting on the trip until his helicopter had taken off from the White House.
Polls show Americans increasingly weary of the war and there is skepticism, including among Obama’s fellow Democrats who control the U.S. Congress, over sending more troops.
Obama has held a series of meetings with his war Cabinet to review the new Afghan strategy he put in place in March and to consider a request by his top military commander in the field, General Stanley McChrystal, for 40,000 more troops to combat a resurgent Taliban.
He is set to meet again on Friday with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the heads of the military services, the White House said.
Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said on Tuesday the decision-making process was “probably getting to the end” and a final decision could be expected in the coming weeks.
MEDIA BAN RELAXED
Critics, particularly among opposition Republicans, accuse Obama of being overly cautious and indecisive, but the White House has said a decision of such magnitude requires careful consideration.
The process has been complicated by an Afghan presidential election in August marred by widespread fraud in favor of incumbent president Hamid Karzai. A second round is due to be held on November 7.
Underlining the fragility of the security situation even in the capital, Kabul, Taliban militants stormed a guest-house in Kabul on Wednesday and killed five U.N. foreign staff.
About two-thirds of the 100,000 NATO-led forces are U.S. troops. More than 900 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon relaxed its ban on media coverage of returning U.S. war dead by allowing families to decide whether to allow photos and television footage of the flag-draped coffins of their loved ones.
The ban had been imposed since the days of the 1991 Gulf War with some exceptions, including the return of Navy seamen killed during the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.
Bush imposed a stricter ban during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sparking criticism the federal government was hiding the human cost of its military operations.
In 2005, Myanmar allowed for the first time overseas job seekers to work in Qatar in the Middle East, a region once the country considered too dangerous and too susceptible to unrest for Myanmar workers.
More than 500 Myanmar workers arrived Qatar annually since then where demand for labor is high, overseas employment agencies said.
The government’s opening up of the overseas job opportunity to work in Qatar came after the launching in January 2005 of a direct flight to Yangon by the Qatar Airways, which stands the region’s airline.
In the past few decades, Myanmar has been encouraging its people to work overseas as part of its bid to ease domestic employment problem, and thousands of Myanmar job seekers worked in Asian countries with the majority in Malaysia, followed by in South Korea, Singapore and Japan.
The Myanmar labor authorities urged the country’s migrant workers to go through formal procedures to get jobs in Thailand to prevent from being deceived by such traffickers.
Overseas employment statistics show that Myanmar migratory workers mostly sought overseas jobs in Singapore during the period between 1996 and 2001 and the number working in the country reduced starting 2001 with Malaysia becoming the market for overseas employment.
According to earlier local report which quoted Malaysian official sources, Myanmar migratory workers accounted for the majority out of 1.84 million overseas workers working in Malaysia.
Along with the two southeast Asian countries, Qatar and Dubai also stand destinations for the agents to send Myanmar migratory workers. Over the past two years, the government issued temporary passports for Myanmar workers to work in neighboring Thailand and more such workers were encouraged to do so under bilateral cooperation between the two countries.
According to earlier report, of about 300,000 Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand, only 80,000 hold official labor cards issued by the Thai Labor Ministry, while about 120,000 have only stay visas and the rest or 100,000 are living in that country without having any legal documents.
It was warned that some illegal Myanmar workers in Thailand are facing labor exploitation by human traffickers who gave false promise of finding lucrative jobs in other countries.
