China acknowledges 'cancer villages'
BBC 23 Feb 2013
China's environment ministry appears to have acknowledged the existence of so-called "cancer villages" after years of public speculation about the impact of pollution in certain areas.
For years campaigners have said cancer rates in some villages near factories and polluted waterways have shot up.
There have been many calls for China to be more transparent on pollution.
The latest report from the environment ministry is entitled "Guard against and control risks presented by chemicals to the environment during the 12th Five-Year period (2011-2015)".
It says that the widespread production and consumption of harmful chemicals forbidden in many developed nations are still found in China.
"The toxic chemicals have caused many environmental emergencies linked to water and air pollution," it said.
The report goes on to acknowledge that such chemicals could pose a long-term risk to human health, making a direct link to the so-called "cancer villages".
"There are even some serious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions," it said.
Beijing smog
The BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing says that as China has experienced rapid development, stories about so-called cancer villages have become more frequent.
And China has witnessed growing public anger over air pollution and industrial waste caused by industrial development.
Media coverage of conditions in these so-called "cancer villages" has been widespread. In 2009, one Chinese journalist published a map identifying dozens of apparently affected villages.
In 2007 the BBC visited the small hamlet of Shangba in southern China where one scientist was studying the cause and effects of pollution on the village.
He found high levels of poisonous heavy metals in the water and believed there was a direct connection between incidences of cancer and mining in the area.
Until now, there has been little comment from the government on such allegations.
Environmental lawyer Wang Canfa, who runs a pollution aid centre in Beijing, told the AFP news agency that it was the first time the "cancer village" phrase had appeared in a ministry document.
Last month - Beijing - and several other cities - were blanketed in smog that soared past levels considered hazardous by the World Health Organisation.
The choking pollution provoked a public outcry and led to a highly charged debate about the costs of the country's rapid economic development, our correspondent says.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21545868
Saturday, February 23, 2013
China's 'leftover women', unmarried at 27
China's 'leftover women', unmarried at 27
By Mary Kay Magistad PRI's The World, Beijing
Over 27? Unmarried? Female? In China, you could be labelled a "leftover woman" by the state - but some professional Chinese women these days are happy being single.
Huang Yuanyuan is working late at her job in a Beijing radio newsroom. She's also stressing out about the fact that the next day, she'll turn 29.
"Scary. I'm one year older," she says. "I'm nervous."
Why?
"Because I'm still single. I have no boyfriend. I'm under big pressure to get married."
Huang is a confident, personable young woman with a good salary, her own apartment, an MA from one of China's top universities, and a wealth of friends.
Still, she knows that these days, single, urban, educated women like her in China are called "sheng nu" or "leftover women" - and it stings.
She feels pressure from her friends and her family, and the message gets hammered in by China's state-run media too.
Even the website of the government's supposedly feminist All-China Women's Federation featured articles about "leftover women" - until enough women complained.
State-run media started using the term "sheng nu" in 2007. That same year the government warned that China's gender imbalance - caused by selective abortions because of the one-child policy - was a serious problem.
National Bureau of Statistics data shows there are now about 20 million more men under 30 than women under 30.
"Ever since 2007, the state media have aggressively disseminated this term in surveys, and news reports, and columns, and cartoons and pictures, basically stigmatising educated women over the age of 27 or 30 who are still single," says Leta Hong-Fincher, an American doing a sociology PhD at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Census figures for China show that around one in five women aged 25-29 is unmarried.
The proportion of unmarried men that age is higher - over a third. But that doesn't mean they will easily match up, since Chinese men tend to "marry down", both in terms of age and educational attainment.
"There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women," says Huang Yuanyuan. "The people left are A-quality women and D-quality men. So if you are a leftover woman, you are A-quality."
But it's the "A-quality" of intelligent and educated women that the government most wants to procreate, according to Leta Hong-Fincher. She cites a statement on population put out by the State Council - China's cabinet - in 2007.
"It said China faced unprecedented population pressures, and that the overall quality of the population is too low, so the country has to upgrade the quality of the population."
Some local governments in China have taken to organising matchmaking events, where educated young women can meet eligible bachelors.
The goal is not only to improve the gene pool, believes Fincher, but to get as many men paired off and tied down in marriage as possible - to reduce, as far as possible, the army of restless, single men who could cause social havoc.
But the tendency to look down on women of a certain age who aren't married isn't exclusively an attitude promoted by the government.
Chen (not her real name), who works for an investment consulting company, knows this all too well.
She's single and enjoying life in Beijing, far away from parents in a conservative southern city who, she says, are ashamed that they have an unmarried 38-year-old daughter.
"They don't want to take me with them to gatherings, because they don't want others to know they have a daughter so old but still not married," she says.
"They're afraid their friends and neighbours will regard me as abnormal. And my parents would also feel they were totally losing face, when their friends all have grandkids already."
Chen's parents have tried setting her up on blind dates. At one point her father threatened to disown her if she wasn't married before the end of the year.
Now they say if she's not going to find a man, she should come back home and live with them.
Chen knows what she wants - someone who is "honest and responsible", and good company, or no-one at all.
Meanwhile, the state-run media keep up a barrage of messages aimed at just this sort of "picky" educated woman.
"Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult," reads an excerpt from an article titled, Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy, posted on the website of the All-China Federation of Women in March 2011.
It continues: "These girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realise that as women age, they are worth less and less. So by the time they get their MA or PhD, they are already old - like yellowed pearls."
Ouch.
The All-China Federation of Women used to have more than 15 articles on its website on the subject of "leftover women" - offering tips on how to stand out from a crowd, matchmaking advice, and even a psychological analysis of why a woman would want to marry late.
In the last few months, it has dropped the term from its website, and now refers to "old" unmarried women (which it classes as over 27, or sometimes over 30), but the expression remains widely used elsewhere.
"It's caught on like a fad, but it belittles older, unmarried women - so the media should stop using this term, and should instead respect women's human rights," says Fan Aiguo, secretary general of the China Association of Marriage and Family Studies, an independent group that is part of the All-China Federation of Women.
If it sounds odd to call women "leftover" at 27 or 30, China has a long tradition of women marrying young. But the age of marriage has been rising, as it often does in places where women become more educated.
In 1950, the average age for urban Chinese women to marry for the first time was just under 20. By the 1980s it was 25, and now it's... about 27.
A 29-year-old marketing executive, who uses the English name Elissa, says being single at her age isn't half bad.
"Living alone, I can do whatever I like. I can hang out with my good friends whenever I like," she says. "I love my job, and I can do a lot of stuff all by myself - like reading, like going to theatres.
"I have many single friends around me, so we can spend a lot of time together."
Sure, she says, during a hurried lunch break, her parents would like her to find someone, and she has gone on a few blind dates, for their sake. But, she says, they've been a "disaster".
"I didn't do these things because I wanted to, but because my parents wanted it, and I wanted them to stop worrying. But I don't believe in the blind dates. How can you get to know a person in this way?"
Elissa says she'd love to meet the right man, but it will happen when it happens. Meanwhile, life is good - and she has to get back to work.
Mary Kay Magistad is the East Asia correspondent for The World - a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH
'
Who are you calling "leftover"? Huang Yuanyuan (front) and her colleague Wang Tingting
The best time to get married is
Nine out of 10 men in China think women should get married before 27
Sixty per cent say the ideal time is 25-27
One per cent believe the best age for a woman to get married is 31-35
Source: 2010 National Marriage Survey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21320560
Flashback: America's 'leftover women' furore
Cover of Newsweek magazine from June 1986, with the headline "The Marriage Crunch"
In the US, women of a certain age might remember a 1986 Newsweek article that said women who weren't married by 40 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of finding a husband.
It created a wave of anxiety in educated, professional women at the time, and was widely quoted - e.g. in the film Sleepless in Seattle.
Newsweek eventually admitted it was wrong, and a follow-up study found that two-thirds of the single, college-educated American women who were 40 in 1986 had married by 2010.
By Mary Kay Magistad PRI's The World, Beijing
Over 27? Unmarried? Female? In China, you could be labelled a "leftover woman" by the state - but some professional Chinese women these days are happy being single.
Huang Yuanyuan is working late at her job in a Beijing radio newsroom. She's also stressing out about the fact that the next day, she'll turn 29.
"Scary. I'm one year older," she says. "I'm nervous."
Why?
"Because I'm still single. I have no boyfriend. I'm under big pressure to get married."
Huang is a confident, personable young woman with a good salary, her own apartment, an MA from one of China's top universities, and a wealth of friends.
Still, she knows that these days, single, urban, educated women like her in China are called "sheng nu" or "leftover women" - and it stings.
She feels pressure from her friends and her family, and the message gets hammered in by China's state-run media too.
Even the website of the government's supposedly feminist All-China Women's Federation featured articles about "leftover women" - until enough women complained.
State-run media started using the term "sheng nu" in 2007. That same year the government warned that China's gender imbalance - caused by selective abortions because of the one-child policy - was a serious problem.
National Bureau of Statistics data shows there are now about 20 million more men under 30 than women under 30.
"Ever since 2007, the state media have aggressively disseminated this term in surveys, and news reports, and columns, and cartoons and pictures, basically stigmatising educated women over the age of 27 or 30 who are still single," says Leta Hong-Fincher, an American doing a sociology PhD at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Census figures for China show that around one in five women aged 25-29 is unmarried.
The proportion of unmarried men that age is higher - over a third. But that doesn't mean they will easily match up, since Chinese men tend to "marry down", both in terms of age and educational attainment.
"There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women," says Huang Yuanyuan. "The people left are A-quality women and D-quality men. So if you are a leftover woman, you are A-quality."
But it's the "A-quality" of intelligent and educated women that the government most wants to procreate, according to Leta Hong-Fincher. She cites a statement on population put out by the State Council - China's cabinet - in 2007.
"It said China faced unprecedented population pressures, and that the overall quality of the population is too low, so the country has to upgrade the quality of the population."
Some local governments in China have taken to organising matchmaking events, where educated young women can meet eligible bachelors.
The goal is not only to improve the gene pool, believes Fincher, but to get as many men paired off and tied down in marriage as possible - to reduce, as far as possible, the army of restless, single men who could cause social havoc.
But the tendency to look down on women of a certain age who aren't married isn't exclusively an attitude promoted by the government.
Chen (not her real name), who works for an investment consulting company, knows this all too well.
She's single and enjoying life in Beijing, far away from parents in a conservative southern city who, she says, are ashamed that they have an unmarried 38-year-old daughter.
"They don't want to take me with them to gatherings, because they don't want others to know they have a daughter so old but still not married," she says.
"They're afraid their friends and neighbours will regard me as abnormal. And my parents would also feel they were totally losing face, when their friends all have grandkids already."
Chen's parents have tried setting her up on blind dates. At one point her father threatened to disown her if she wasn't married before the end of the year.
Now they say if she's not going to find a man, she should come back home and live with them.
Chen knows what she wants - someone who is "honest and responsible", and good company, or no-one at all.
Meanwhile, the state-run media keep up a barrage of messages aimed at just this sort of "picky" educated woman.
"Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult," reads an excerpt from an article titled, Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy, posted on the website of the All-China Federation of Women in March 2011.
It continues: "These girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realise that as women age, they are worth less and less. So by the time they get their MA or PhD, they are already old - like yellowed pearls."
Ouch.
The All-China Federation of Women used to have more than 15 articles on its website on the subject of "leftover women" - offering tips on how to stand out from a crowd, matchmaking advice, and even a psychological analysis of why a woman would want to marry late.
In the last few months, it has dropped the term from its website, and now refers to "old" unmarried women (which it classes as over 27, or sometimes over 30), but the expression remains widely used elsewhere.
"It's caught on like a fad, but it belittles older, unmarried women - so the media should stop using this term, and should instead respect women's human rights," says Fan Aiguo, secretary general of the China Association of Marriage and Family Studies, an independent group that is part of the All-China Federation of Women.
If it sounds odd to call women "leftover" at 27 or 30, China has a long tradition of women marrying young. But the age of marriage has been rising, as it often does in places where women become more educated.
In 1950, the average age for urban Chinese women to marry for the first time was just under 20. By the 1980s it was 25, and now it's... about 27.
A 29-year-old marketing executive, who uses the English name Elissa, says being single at her age isn't half bad.
"Living alone, I can do whatever I like. I can hang out with my good friends whenever I like," she says. "I love my job, and I can do a lot of stuff all by myself - like reading, like going to theatres.
"I have many single friends around me, so we can spend a lot of time together."
Sure, she says, during a hurried lunch break, her parents would like her to find someone, and she has gone on a few blind dates, for their sake. But, she says, they've been a "disaster".
"I didn't do these things because I wanted to, but because my parents wanted it, and I wanted them to stop worrying. But I don't believe in the blind dates. How can you get to know a person in this way?"
Elissa says she'd love to meet the right man, but it will happen when it happens. Meanwhile, life is good - and she has to get back to work.
Mary Kay Magistad is the East Asia correspondent for The World - a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH
'Who are you calling "leftover"? Huang Yuanyuan (front) and her colleague Wang Tingting
The best time to get married is
Nine out of 10 men in China think women should get married before 27
Sixty per cent say the ideal time is 25-27
One per cent believe the best age for a woman to get married is 31-35
Source: 2010 National Marriage Survey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21320560
Flashback: America's 'leftover women' furore
Cover of Newsweek magazine from June 1986, with the headline "The Marriage Crunch"
In the US, women of a certain age might remember a 1986 Newsweek article that said women who weren't married by 40 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of finding a husband.
It created a wave of anxiety in educated, professional women at the time, and was widely quoted - e.g. in the film Sleepless in Seattle.
Newsweek eventually admitted it was wrong, and a follow-up study found that two-thirds of the single, college-educated American women who were 40 in 1986 had married by 2010.
Putting a face to the conflict in Thailand's south By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok
Putting a face to the conflict in Thailand's south
By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok
Nine years ago, a forgotten conflict in the far south of Thailand flared up in the most dramatic way.
Gunmen raided a military arms depot, killing the four guards and making off with around 400 assault rifles.
Three months later waves of insurgents, armed with some of those captured weapons, launched co-ordinated attacks on 11 police posts in an almost suicidal fashion - 107 of them were killed, including 32 who had taken shelter in the historic Krue Se mosque in Pattani.
The insurgency, as it is now known, has killed more than 5,000 people, 550 of them members of the Thai security forces.
Most of the attacks have been on a small scale - drive-by shootings by gunmen on motorbikes, small roadside bombs detonated by mobile phones, gruesome beheadings of traders or rubber-tappers heading to work in the early morning.
The violence has never spread beyond the three-and-a-half provinces next to the Malaysian border, which have predominantly Malay Muslim populations. The almost daily attacks rarely make headlines, and the insurgents, who are mainly young Muslim men, make few statements and do not acknowledge any centralised leadership.
Theirs remains a faceless movement, although they are presumed to be fighting for the goal of an independent Islamic state, inspired by the old Malay sultanate of Pattani, which used to govern this region until it was annexed by Thailand in 1909.
But last week, a failed insurgent assault on a Thai marine base lifted the mask for a moment.
The marines had been warned and met the night-time raiders with booby traps and volleys of gunfire.
Sixteen of the militants were killed, their bodies strewn among the rubber trees. Most of them were well-known by the Thai authorities. Some were local - from the village of Tanyong, just a 10-minute drive from the base.
Many of the people in this region do not speak Thai and do not readily talk to outsiders, especially journalists. There is a climate of fear, created by the years of insurgent attacks and military retaliation.
Proud of death
But the day after the marine base raid, the families of three of the insurgents who lived next door to each other in Tanyong were receiving visitors and speaking.
I met the father and widow of 25-year-old Sa-oudi Alee. Both said they were proud of the way he had died, fighting for his beliefs.
Darunee Alee has been left to bring up their 18-month-old son, but refused to be downcast.
Why did Sa-oudi feel he had to join the insurgents, I asked?
She said that like many of the other insurgents, he became involved after the Tak Bai incident in October 2004, when the Thai army detained dozens of Muslim men and piled them, tied up, on top of each other in trucks before driving them for three hours.
Seventy-eight of them died on the journey from being crushed or suffocated.
Sa-oudi had spent two years in jail and was released last year. His passport showed he had also travelled six times to Malaysia between 2007 and 2008, although his family were unclear what he was doing there.
Darunee's father-in-law, Matohe Alee, has eight surviving children, six of them boys. Would he allow them to follow their brother and join the insurgency?
Marohso Jantarawadee, shown here with his wife, was the leader of the group
He would try to stop them, he said, but they don't always listen.
Murmurs of approval
Marta Majid has three young daughters. She knew her husband, Hasem, was involved with the insurgents. He stayed away from home and the army often searched her house.
But his violent death clearly came as a shock and she looked bewildered. Most of his head was blown off in the attack, and she described having to identify him by the shape of his lower jaw.
Just down the road, a steady stream of neighbours was filing through the brand-new home of Marohso Jantarawadee to pay their respects to his widow, Rusanee.
He was the commander of the operation against the base and one of Thailand's most wanted men, with more than 12 arrest warrants against him and a price on his head.
Through her tears, Rusanee said she felt honoured to have been his wife, although she grieved that their young son would never know his father.
There were murmurs of approval from the visitors in the house. None questioned an insurgent campaign which has targeted teachers, Buddhist monks and anyone working for the Thai state.
Instead they recounted their own narrative, of repeated harassment by the authorities.
On the road outside, a platoon of Thai soldiers patrolled carefully, keeping a lookout for ambushes, prodding gingerly in the thick, tropical vegetation for possible bombs.
They have a good idea who the insurgent families are, but have found it hard to track down leaders in a movement which is so fragmented.
Sometimes suspected insurgents are taken in for questioning.
At times in the past they have been tortured, although the military has been presenting its most conciliatory face after last week's attack, regretting the loss of life and referring to the insurgents as "Thai citizens, like us".
The death of Marohso, though, is clearly seen as a coup.
'Historical mistrust'
But it will not change the course of the conflict, said Don Pathan, a long-time reporter and researcher on Thailand's deep south.
Most of the people here share the same sentiment, the same historical mistrust of the Thai state", he said.
"They often look at these insurgents as local heroes. They may not agree with the brutality but I can assure you they share the same sentiments.
"And a lot of these the insurgents are their kids, their nephews, their neighbours' nephews - they are not going to turn them in."
He warned that although the insurgents use the language of jihad, and some of the methods of other jihadist groups, the conflict is at heart about Malay-Pattani nationalism and not Islam.
There are few signs that this or any other Thai government recognises that.
The current Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra did propose some form of autonomy during her election campaign two years ago, but quickly dropped it in the face of opposition from the military.
The army, the police, local politicians and the insurgents are all believed to make significant money from the rampant smuggling of everything from drugs, to people, to diesel fuel, in this border region.
There seems little incentive to risk bold initiatives that might end the fighting.
And so it grinds on, into its tenth year.
By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok
Nine years ago, a forgotten conflict in the far south of Thailand flared up in the most dramatic way.
Gunmen raided a military arms depot, killing the four guards and making off with around 400 assault rifles.
Three months later waves of insurgents, armed with some of those captured weapons, launched co-ordinated attacks on 11 police posts in an almost suicidal fashion - 107 of them were killed, including 32 who had taken shelter in the historic Krue Se mosque in Pattani.
The insurgency, as it is now known, has killed more than 5,000 people, 550 of them members of the Thai security forces.
Most of the attacks have been on a small scale - drive-by shootings by gunmen on motorbikes, small roadside bombs detonated by mobile phones, gruesome beheadings of traders or rubber-tappers heading to work in the early morning.
The violence has never spread beyond the three-and-a-half provinces next to the Malaysian border, which have predominantly Malay Muslim populations. The almost daily attacks rarely make headlines, and the insurgents, who are mainly young Muslim men, make few statements and do not acknowledge any centralised leadership.
Theirs remains a faceless movement, although they are presumed to be fighting for the goal of an independent Islamic state, inspired by the old Malay sultanate of Pattani, which used to govern this region until it was annexed by Thailand in 1909.
But last week, a failed insurgent assault on a Thai marine base lifted the mask for a moment.
The marines had been warned and met the night-time raiders with booby traps and volleys of gunfire.
Sixteen of the militants were killed, their bodies strewn among the rubber trees. Most of them were well-known by the Thai authorities. Some were local - from the village of Tanyong, just a 10-minute drive from the base.
Many of the people in this region do not speak Thai and do not readily talk to outsiders, especially journalists. There is a climate of fear, created by the years of insurgent attacks and military retaliation.
Proud of death
But the day after the marine base raid, the families of three of the insurgents who lived next door to each other in Tanyong were receiving visitors and speaking.
I met the father and widow of 25-year-old Sa-oudi Alee. Both said they were proud of the way he had died, fighting for his beliefs.
Darunee Alee has been left to bring up their 18-month-old son, but refused to be downcast.
Why did Sa-oudi feel he had to join the insurgents, I asked?
She said that like many of the other insurgents, he became involved after the Tak Bai incident in October 2004, when the Thai army detained dozens of Muslim men and piled them, tied up, on top of each other in trucks before driving them for three hours.
Seventy-eight of them died on the journey from being crushed or suffocated.
Sa-oudi had spent two years in jail and was released last year. His passport showed he had also travelled six times to Malaysia between 2007 and 2008, although his family were unclear what he was doing there.
Darunee's father-in-law, Matohe Alee, has eight surviving children, six of them boys. Would he allow them to follow their brother and join the insurgency?
Marohso Jantarawadee, shown here with his wife, was the leader of the groupHe would try to stop them, he said, but they don't always listen.
Murmurs of approval
Marta Majid has three young daughters. She knew her husband, Hasem, was involved with the insurgents. He stayed away from home and the army often searched her house.
But his violent death clearly came as a shock and she looked bewildered. Most of his head was blown off in the attack, and she described having to identify him by the shape of his lower jaw.
Just down the road, a steady stream of neighbours was filing through the brand-new home of Marohso Jantarawadee to pay their respects to his widow, Rusanee.
He was the commander of the operation against the base and one of Thailand's most wanted men, with more than 12 arrest warrants against him and a price on his head.
Through her tears, Rusanee said she felt honoured to have been his wife, although she grieved that their young son would never know his father.
There were murmurs of approval from the visitors in the house. None questioned an insurgent campaign which has targeted teachers, Buddhist monks and anyone working for the Thai state.
Instead they recounted their own narrative, of repeated harassment by the authorities.
On the road outside, a platoon of Thai soldiers patrolled carefully, keeping a lookout for ambushes, prodding gingerly in the thick, tropical vegetation for possible bombs.
They have a good idea who the insurgent families are, but have found it hard to track down leaders in a movement which is so fragmented.
Sometimes suspected insurgents are taken in for questioning.
At times in the past they have been tortured, although the military has been presenting its most conciliatory face after last week's attack, regretting the loss of life and referring to the insurgents as "Thai citizens, like us".
The death of Marohso, though, is clearly seen as a coup.
'Historical mistrust'
But it will not change the course of the conflict, said Don Pathan, a long-time reporter and researcher on Thailand's deep south.
Most of the people here share the same sentiment, the same historical mistrust of the Thai state", he said.
"They often look at these insurgents as local heroes. They may not agree with the brutality but I can assure you they share the same sentiments.
"And a lot of these the insurgents are their kids, their nephews, their neighbours' nephews - they are not going to turn them in."
He warned that although the insurgents use the language of jihad, and some of the methods of other jihadist groups, the conflict is at heart about Malay-Pattani nationalism and not Islam.
There are few signs that this or any other Thai government recognises that.
The current Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra did propose some form of autonomy during her election campaign two years ago, but quickly dropped it in the face of opposition from the military.
The army, the police, local politicians and the insurgents are all believed to make significant money from the rampant smuggling of everything from drugs, to people, to diesel fuel, in this border region.
There seems little incentive to risk bold initiatives that might end the fighting.
And so it grinds on, into its tenth year.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Prince Phillip jokes about large number of FT nurses in UK
Prince Philip jokes about large number of FT nurses in UK
http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/02/21/prince-philip-jokes-about-large-number-of-ft-nurses-in-uk/
With the many Filipino nurses working in UK, even the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, who is the husband of Queen Elizabeth, was prompted to joke that Philippines must be “half empty”.
He made the remark during a visit to Luton and Dunstable Hospital. The Duke met a Filipino nurse and told her jokingly, “The Philippines must be half empty – you’re all here running the NHS.”
The Filipino nurse laughed.
A spokesperson for the hospital said the visit of the duke had been “hugely motivational”.
However, the hospital spokesperson would not comment on the duke’s conversation with the nurse but said the hospital had not held a recent recruiting campaign in the Philippines.
“Luton is a very cosmopolitan town and the working staff at Luton and Dunstable Hospital reflects that,” the spokesperson said.
16,184 (2.4%) of the 670,000 nurses currently in the UK are from the Philippines.
Responding to Tuesday’s visit to Luton, Buckingham Palace said it would not comment on a private conversation.
During the previous Labour govt under Gordon Brown, immigration rules were relaxed, resulting in a surge of immigration into UK. UK’s immigrant population jumped by 3 million in the 10 years from 2001 to 2011, with 1 in 8 (about 13%) residents now are foreign-born [Link].
Last month, at the Fabian Society, UK Labour party chief, Ed Miliband admitted the last Labour government (then under Gordon Brown) did not do enough for ordinary people, becoming distant on issues such as immigration.
As a result, the Labour government lost heavily in the last UK General Election in 2010. The Labour party lost 91 parliamentary seats from 349 seats (53.7%) to 258 (39.7%). It lost control of the majority in parliament, giving way to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to form the current coalition govt in UK. Gordon Brown stepped down as the Labour party chief and Ed Miliband succeeded him.
Miliband is distancing himself from his mentor, Gordon Brown, who famously described a Rochdale voter as a “bigoted woman” after she raised concerns with Brown, then PM, about immigration during the election.
Miliband said, “I bow to nobody in my celebration of the multi-ethnic, diverse nature of Britain. But high levels of migration were having huge effects on the lives of people in Britain – and too often those in power seemed not to accept this. The fact that they didn’t, explains partly why people turned against us in the last general election.”
In another public speech in Jun last year, Miliband also conceded that his party had “got things wrong” on immigration.
He said that people who worry about immigration should not be characterised as bigots – a reference to the same famous incident when his predecessor Gordon Brown, described the Rochdale voter as a “bigoted woman”.
Miliband said, “Worrying about immigration, talking about immigration, thinking about immigration, does not make them bigots. Not in any way.”
http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/02/21/prince-philip-jokes-about-large-number-of-ft-nurses-in-uk/
With the many Filipino nurses working in UK, even the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, who is the husband of Queen Elizabeth, was prompted to joke that Philippines must be “half empty”.
He made the remark during a visit to Luton and Dunstable Hospital. The Duke met a Filipino nurse and told her jokingly, “The Philippines must be half empty – you’re all here running the NHS.”
The Filipino nurse laughed.
A spokesperson for the hospital said the visit of the duke had been “hugely motivational”.
However, the hospital spokesperson would not comment on the duke’s conversation with the nurse but said the hospital had not held a recent recruiting campaign in the Philippines.
“Luton is a very cosmopolitan town and the working staff at Luton and Dunstable Hospital reflects that,” the spokesperson said.
16,184 (2.4%) of the 670,000 nurses currently in the UK are from the Philippines.
Responding to Tuesday’s visit to Luton, Buckingham Palace said it would not comment on a private conversation.
During the previous Labour govt under Gordon Brown, immigration rules were relaxed, resulting in a surge of immigration into UK. UK’s immigrant population jumped by 3 million in the 10 years from 2001 to 2011, with 1 in 8 (about 13%) residents now are foreign-born [Link].
Last month, at the Fabian Society, UK Labour party chief, Ed Miliband admitted the last Labour government (then under Gordon Brown) did not do enough for ordinary people, becoming distant on issues such as immigration.
As a result, the Labour government lost heavily in the last UK General Election in 2010. The Labour party lost 91 parliamentary seats from 349 seats (53.7%) to 258 (39.7%). It lost control of the majority in parliament, giving way to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to form the current coalition govt in UK. Gordon Brown stepped down as the Labour party chief and Ed Miliband succeeded him.
Miliband is distancing himself from his mentor, Gordon Brown, who famously described a Rochdale voter as a “bigoted woman” after she raised concerns with Brown, then PM, about immigration during the election.
Miliband said, “I bow to nobody in my celebration of the multi-ethnic, diverse nature of Britain. But high levels of migration were having huge effects on the lives of people in Britain – and too often those in power seemed not to accept this. The fact that they didn’t, explains partly why people turned against us in the last general election.”
In another public speech in Jun last year, Miliband also conceded that his party had “got things wrong” on immigration.
He said that people who worry about immigration should not be characterised as bigots – a reference to the same famous incident when his predecessor Gordon Brown, described the Rochdale voter as a “bigoted woman”.
Miliband said, “Worrying about immigration, talking about immigration, thinking about immigration, does not make them bigots. Not in any way.”
Economy dives from 5.2% growth in 2011 to 1.3% last year 2012
The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) announced today (22 Feb) that the Singapore economy grew by 1.3% in 2012.
For the 4th quarter in 2012, the Singapore economy grew by 1.5% on a year-on-year basis.
For the whole of 2012, Singapore’s GDP growth slowed to 1.3 per cent, from 5.2 per cent in 2011, mainly due to weakness in the externally-oriented sectors. The breakdown is as follows:
2012
1. Manufacturing 0.1% (previous year was 7.8% – electonics industry contracted)
2. Construction 8.2% (previous year was 6.3% – public and private building activities increased)
3. Service 1.2%
a. Business services sector 3.9% (strong performance in the real estate segment)
b. Wholesale & retail trade sector -0.7%
c. Finance & insurance sector 0.5%
d. Others 0.1%
Economic Outlook for 2013
The global macroeconomic conditions have stabilised in recent months against the backdrop of improved financial market conditions. Nevertheless, global economic growth is likely to remain subdued. In the US, while the housing market has shown signs of improvement, the strength of the economic recovery will be restrained by fiscal tightening. In the Eurozone, economic growth is expected to remain stagnant, weighed down by ongoing fiscal tightening, private sector deleveraging, as well as high unemployment rates.
In Asia, growth is likely to be moderate, supported by resilient domestic demand and modest growth in external demand. Against this macroeconomic backdrop, the outlook for the Singapore economy remains cautiously positive. MTI is maintaining its 2013 economic growth forecast at 1.0 to 3.0%.
While downside risks have receded, the global economic outlook is still clouded with uncertainties. In particular, concerns remain over the extent of the fiscal cutback with the budget sequester in the US, as well as the potential flare-up of the debt crisis in the Eurozone. Should any of these risks materialise, Singapore’s economic growth could come in lower than expected.
Land scarce Singapore looks underground for space squeeze solution as population bulges
Land scarce Singapore looks underground for space squeeze solution as population bulges
Associated Press
By Heather Tan, Associated Press | Associated Press
SINGAPORE (AP) -- Already one of the most densely populated countries in the world, tiny land scarce Singapore is projecting its population to swell by a third over the next two decades. To accommodate the influx, its planners envisage expanding upward, outward and downward.
The population target of 6.9 million people, an increase of 1.3 million from the present, is contentious in a country where rapid immigration has already strained services such as public transport and contributed to surging home prices and a widening wealth gap. It sparked a rare protest last week, with some 3,000 people gathering in a park that's the only approved area for demonstrations.
Singaporeans, whose forebears mostly hailed from southern China, fear their falling birth rates combined with the relentless immigration will reduce them to a minority in their own country. Adding a new dimension to their complaints is the idea that planners want underground living to leap off their drawing boards and become a solution to overcrowding.
State media is already championing the idea. In September, the Straits Times newspaper characterized underground living as the "next frontier" for Singapore. It said Singaporeans may one day "live, work and play below ground in vast, subterranean caverns that make today's underground malls look like home basements." The Building Construction Authority, which oversees a new agency responsible for surveying underground, said it could become reality by 2050.
The public's reaction has included derision and disbelief.
"Why pull me down," said Patricia Bian-Hing, a retired 87-year-old businesswoman. "The only time I will go underground peacefully to live will be in my coffin."
But experts are calling for an open mind about the possibility.
"Singaporeans are dismissing this prospect because it is new, not because it is unworkable or implausible," said Jeffrey Chan, an assistant professor of architecture at the National University of Singapore.
"Astronauts who live in space stations, despite the abundance of direct sunlight have to live in shade most of the time, and they are only debilitated from the lack of gravity, not light," he said. "Hence, I think if there are any biologically-imposed constraints, psychologically or real, these biological constraints can be overcome through new habits or technologically."
With about 675 square kilometers (261 square miles) of land, Singapore is only 3.5 times the size of Washington DC and has limited options for increasing its space. Land reclaimed from the sea already accounts for a fifth of its landmass and Singapore's appetite for imported sand for reclamation has caused tensions with neighboring countries concerned about coastal erosion. But its ruling People's Action Party, in power since 1959, sees a bigger population as crucial to its goal of transforming Singapore into what it calls a leading world city.
The government's new plans call for releasing land for housing and industry by closing golf courses and military training grounds and paving over some of the island's nature reserves. That along with reclamation will free some 5,200 hectares (52 square kilometers, 20 square miles) of land to help accommodate an additional 700,000 homes and new shops and factories over the next 20 years. The projected increase in available land lags far behind the planned population increase so projects to put industry and other activities underground are already advancing on several fronts despite the technical challenges and significantly higher costs of subterranean construction.
"Going underground is one option for Singapore as it frees up surface land," said David Tan, assistant chief executive officer of Jurong Town Corporation, Singapore's main development body.
The JTC is studying construction of an underground science complex beneath an existing science park that's used by biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Projected to cost 50 percent more than a similar facility above ground, it would go down 30 storeys — 80 to 100 meters — and house laboratories, offices and a data center.
The corporation has already overseen construction of a massive underground oil bunker in rock caverns that freed up a surface area equivalent to six petrochemical plants. The island also saved 300 hectares of space by putting an ammunition bunker underground.
A possibility explored for several years is an underground extension of Singapore's Nangyang Technological University after a 1999 study by the government and the university found at least part of the area beneath the campus could be turned into rock caverns. Planners envisage four underground levels that could accommodate lecture theatres, cinemas, libraries, offices, laboratories and car parking.
"If we think about it, there are already underground spaces here in Singapore and throughout most major metropolitan regions," said Erik L'Heureux, an architecture professor NUS.
"We already have underground train stations and malls, and there are already many buildings here that take advantage of spaces below ground so the real questions are how much time will one spend underground, what goes on there, and how far down from natural light and fresh air."
For the Singapore for Singaporeans camp, the space squeeze has only highlighted the costs of the government's population and economic policies. Its efforts to attract high-skilled professionals in finance, science and other industries it wants Singapore to be known for has resulted in nature sanctuaries and cemeteries being overrun by golf courses and luxury condominiums.
"Ultimately it will be Singaporeans who will suffer," said Rachel Mun, a 33-year old sales assistant. "As it is, Singapore is already bursting with people and things we once depended on like transportation, have become exhausted because of the influx of commuters."
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Old Age and The Grieving Process
(Copyright: Thinkstock)
People often talk about a set pattern to bereavement, but Claudia Hammond examines whether the evidence shows that everybody shares the same experience.
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.” Joan Didion’s candid account of bereavement in The Year of Magical Thinking provides a powerful experience of what it is like to lose a loved one.
People often talk about the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The five stages are taught across the world, have made appearances in TV’s The Simpsons and The Office, and the artist Damien Hirst created a series called DABDA, named after the acronym for the five stages. There is no set timeframe for passing through these stages, but they have become accepted as part of the normal pattern of grief.
The concept originates from work done in the 1960s by John Bowlby, the psychologist who became known for his work on attachment between babies and their parents, and Colin Murray-Parkes, who has written a huge amount on bereavement. Together, they identified four stages of grief from interviews with 22 widows: numbness, searching and yearning, depression and reorganisation. Then Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, famous for changing attitudes towards the treatment of the dying, carried out a series of interviews with terminally ill people, and devised the five stages we know of today to describe the experience of facing impending death – though didn’t test them in any systematic way. Their appeal was such that soon the same five stages were being used to describe other sets of emotional reactions, such as grief.
Noting its widespread use without any systematic evidence for such a set pattern, researchers from Yale University tested the five stages in the early 2000s. As lists of the five stages vary slightly from source to source they settled on examining disbelief, yearning, anger, depression and acceptance. For three years they collected data as part of the Yale Bereavement Study – in total 233 people were interviewed approximately six, eleven and nineteen months after a loved one (usually a spouse) had died. Those whose relatives had a violent death or who were suffering from what is known as a complicated grief reaction were excluded.
The resulting picture was more complex than the five stages would suggest. The researchers found that acceptance was the strongest emotion throughout, while disbelief was very low. The second strongest emotion throughout was yearning, and depression was more evident than anger at every stage. Also, emotions did not replace each other in some form of orderly sequence; the highest point of any of those emotions did follow the correct sequence, but a person in the third stage, for example, would still experience acceptance most strongly, not anger.
(Kluber and Ross Model/ 5 Stages Grief Model)
After six months the researchers found that all negative emotions were beginning to decline, but bear in mind that this doesn’t mean that people were somehow “over it”. It’s common to miss the deceased profoundly for years to come, but most people do cope. Also bear in mind that for ethical reasons the researchers could only begin the interviews a month after bereavement, so they had no picture of an initial month that could include conflicting emotions.
Time heals
A study published a few years later included the response to violent deaths too, but this time the bereaved were college students, and so the majority had lost more distant relatives than spouses. Again, the stages were not closely followed, although the researchers found that distress was higher earlier on and acceptance was higher later. But unlike the other study they didn’t follow people over time. The researchers had taken a snapshot in time, so they couldn’t tell whether any one individual was passing through the stages, just that those who were bereaved six months ago tended to differ from those bereaved a year ago.
Another study confirmed that older people do not respond in a set way. George Bonanno from Columbia University followed people before their bereavement, enrolling older couples in the study and then checking the local newspaper obituaries every day for any deaths. He found that 45% genuinely did not experience severe distress after the death of their spouse, nor did they are as time went on – 10% of the widows even showed improved mental health. People were resilient and were able to cope with the death of their spouse. Bonanno’s most recent research, published last year, confirms a lack of set pattern.
Whatever the evidence suggests, the five-stages-of-grief idea is certainly an appealing one, in the sense that it could give people hope that however bad they are feeling now, at least they will eventually move through the stages and feel better. But when I interviewed Ruth David Konigsberg, the author of The Truth About Grief, who has investigated the five stages, she told me it could also set up expectations amongst the grief-stricken that they should be feeling a particular way. “It’s reassuring for people who experience some of the emotions, but it’s stigmatising for those who don’t,” said Konigsberg. “You may feel you’re grieving incorrectly or there’s something wrong with you.”
But, as studies show, there is no “correct” or “incorrect” way to grieve: the same experience isn’t shared by everybody, nor should it be expected to. The loss is always there, but for most the grief changes over time. That doesn’t mean that everyone has to experience every stage or even that feelings will appear in that order. It might be reassuring to have a script, which shows you where you are heading next, but sadly real life experiences aren’t always as neat at the theories describing them. Life is messier than that.
If you would like to comment on this article or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
You can hear more Medical Myths on Health Check on the BBC World Service.
Disclaimer
All content within this column is provided for general information only, and should not be treated as a substitute for the medical advice of your own doctor or any other health care professional. The BBC is not responsible or liable for any diagnosis made by a user based on the content of this site. The BBC is not liable for the contents of any external internet sites listed, nor does it endorse any commercial product or service mentioned or advised on any of the sites. Always consult your own GP if you're in any way concerned about your health.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130219-are-there-five-stages-of-grief/2
Kübler-Ross, E. (1969) On Death and Dying, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-04015-9
Kübler-Ross, E. (2005) On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss, Simon & Schuster Ltd, ISBN 0-7432-6344-8
People often talk about a set pattern to bereavement, but Claudia Hammond examines whether the evidence shows that everybody shares the same experience.
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.” Joan Didion’s candid account of bereavement in The Year of Magical Thinking provides a powerful experience of what it is like to lose a loved one.
People often talk about the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The five stages are taught across the world, have made appearances in TV’s The Simpsons and The Office, and the artist Damien Hirst created a series called DABDA, named after the acronym for the five stages. There is no set timeframe for passing through these stages, but they have become accepted as part of the normal pattern of grief.
The concept originates from work done in the 1960s by John Bowlby, the psychologist who became known for his work on attachment between babies and their parents, and Colin Murray-Parkes, who has written a huge amount on bereavement. Together, they identified four stages of grief from interviews with 22 widows: numbness, searching and yearning, depression and reorganisation. Then Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, famous for changing attitudes towards the treatment of the dying, carried out a series of interviews with terminally ill people, and devised the five stages we know of today to describe the experience of facing impending death – though didn’t test them in any systematic way. Their appeal was such that soon the same five stages were being used to describe other sets of emotional reactions, such as grief.
Noting its widespread use without any systematic evidence for such a set pattern, researchers from Yale University tested the five stages in the early 2000s. As lists of the five stages vary slightly from source to source they settled on examining disbelief, yearning, anger, depression and acceptance. For three years they collected data as part of the Yale Bereavement Study – in total 233 people were interviewed approximately six, eleven and nineteen months after a loved one (usually a spouse) had died. Those whose relatives had a violent death or who were suffering from what is known as a complicated grief reaction were excluded.
The resulting picture was more complex than the five stages would suggest. The researchers found that acceptance was the strongest emotion throughout, while disbelief was very low. The second strongest emotion throughout was yearning, and depression was more evident than anger at every stage. Also, emotions did not replace each other in some form of orderly sequence; the highest point of any of those emotions did follow the correct sequence, but a person in the third stage, for example, would still experience acceptance most strongly, not anger.
(Kluber and Ross Model/ 5 Stages Grief Model)
After six months the researchers found that all negative emotions were beginning to decline, but bear in mind that this doesn’t mean that people were somehow “over it”. It’s common to miss the deceased profoundly for years to come, but most people do cope. Also bear in mind that for ethical reasons the researchers could only begin the interviews a month after bereavement, so they had no picture of an initial month that could include conflicting emotions.
Time heals
A study published a few years later included the response to violent deaths too, but this time the bereaved were college students, and so the majority had lost more distant relatives than spouses. Again, the stages were not closely followed, although the researchers found that distress was higher earlier on and acceptance was higher later. But unlike the other study they didn’t follow people over time. The researchers had taken a snapshot in time, so they couldn’t tell whether any one individual was passing through the stages, just that those who were bereaved six months ago tended to differ from those bereaved a year ago.
Another study confirmed that older people do not respond in a set way. George Bonanno from Columbia University followed people before their bereavement, enrolling older couples in the study and then checking the local newspaper obituaries every day for any deaths. He found that 45% genuinely did not experience severe distress after the death of their spouse, nor did they are as time went on – 10% of the widows even showed improved mental health. People were resilient and were able to cope with the death of their spouse. Bonanno’s most recent research, published last year, confirms a lack of set pattern.
Whatever the evidence suggests, the five-stages-of-grief idea is certainly an appealing one, in the sense that it could give people hope that however bad they are feeling now, at least they will eventually move through the stages and feel better. But when I interviewed Ruth David Konigsberg, the author of The Truth About Grief, who has investigated the five stages, she told me it could also set up expectations amongst the grief-stricken that they should be feeling a particular way. “It’s reassuring for people who experience some of the emotions, but it’s stigmatising for those who don’t,” said Konigsberg. “You may feel you’re grieving incorrectly or there’s something wrong with you.”
But, as studies show, there is no “correct” or “incorrect” way to grieve: the same experience isn’t shared by everybody, nor should it be expected to. The loss is always there, but for most the grief changes over time. That doesn’t mean that everyone has to experience every stage or even that feelings will appear in that order. It might be reassuring to have a script, which shows you where you are heading next, but sadly real life experiences aren’t always as neat at the theories describing them. Life is messier than that.
If you would like to comment on this article or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
You can hear more Medical Myths on Health Check on the BBC World Service.
Disclaimer
All content within this column is provided for general information only, and should not be treated as a substitute for the medical advice of your own doctor or any other health care professional. The BBC is not responsible or liable for any diagnosis made by a user based on the content of this site. The BBC is not liable for the contents of any external internet sites listed, nor does it endorse any commercial product or service mentioned or advised on any of the sites. Always consult your own GP if you're in any way concerned about your health.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130219-are-there-five-stages-of-grief/2
Kübler-Ross, E. (1969) On Death and Dying, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-04015-9
Kübler-Ross, E. (2005) On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss, Simon & Schuster Ltd, ISBN 0-7432-6344-8
Friday, February 8, 2013
Hong Kong poor living in cages and cubicles
Hong Kong poor living in cages and cubicles
Hong Kong leader's policy vow highlights plight of poor living in cages, cubicles amid wealth
Associated PressBy Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer | Associated Press – Thu, Feb 7, 2013 5:06 PM SGT
HONG KONG (AP) -- For many of the richest people in Hong Kong, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, home is a mansion with an expansive view from the heights of Victoria Peak. For some of the poorest, like Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage.
The 67-year-old former butcher pays 1,300 Hong Kong dollars ($167) a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.
The cages, stacked on top of each other, measure 1.5 square meters (16 square feet). To keep bedbugs away, Leung and his roommates put thin pads, bamboo mats, even old linoleum on their cages' wooden planks instead of mattresses.
"I've been bitten so much I'm used to it," said Leung, rolling up the sleeve of his oversized blue fleece jacket to reveal a red mark on his hand. "There's nothing you can do about it. I've got to live here. I've got to survive," he said as he let out a phlegmy cough.
Some 100,000 people in the former British colony live in what's known as inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization, a social welfare group. The category also includes apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks. They're a grim counterpoint to the southern Chinese city's renowned material affluence.
Forced by skyrocketing housing prices to live in cramped, dirty and unsafe conditions, their plight also highlights one of the biggest headaches facing Hong Kong's unpopular Beijing-backed leader: growing public rage over the city's housing crisis.
Leung Chun-ying took office as Hong Kong's chief executive in July pledging to provide more affordable housing in a bid to cool the anger. Home prices rose 23 percent in the first 10 months of 2012 and have doubled since bottoming out in 2008 during the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund said in a report last month. Rents have followed a similar trajectory.
The soaring costs are putting decent homes out of reach of a large portion of the population while stoking resentment of the government, which controls all land for development, and a coterie of wealthy property developers. Housing costs have been fuelled by easy credit thanks to ultralow interest rates that policymakers can't raise because the currency is pegged to the dollar. Money flooding in from mainland Chinese and foreign investors looking for higher returns has exacerbated the rise.
In his inaugural policy speech in January, the chief executive said the inability of the middle class to buy homes posed a threat to social stability and promised to make it a priority to tackle the housing shortage.
"Many families have to move into smaller or older flats, or even factory buildings," he said. "Cramped living space in cage homes, cubicle apartments and sub-divided flats has become the reluctant choice for tens of thousands of Hong Kong people," he said, as he unveiled plans to boost supply of public housing in the medium term from its current level of 15,000 apartments a year.
His comments mark a distinct shift from predecessor Donald Tsang, who ignored the problem. Legislators and activists, however, slammed Leung for a lack of measures to boost the supply in the short term. Some 210,000 people are on the waiting list for public housing, about double from 2006. About a third of Hong Kong's 7.1 million population lives in public rental flats. When apartments bought with government subsidies are included, the figure rises to nearly half.
Anger over housing prices is a common theme in increasingly frequent anti-government protests. Legislator Frederick Fung warns there will be more if the problem can't be solved. He compared the effect on the poor to a lab experiment.
"When we were in secondary school, we had some sort of experiment where we put many rats in a small box. They would bite each other," said Fung. "When living spaces are so congested, they would make people feel uneasy, desperate," and angry at the government, he said.
Leung, the cage dweller, had little faith that the government could do anything to change the situation of people like him.
"It's not whether I believe him or not, but they always talk this way. What hope is there?" said Leung, who has been living in cage homes since he stopped working at a market stall after losing part of a finger 20 years ago. He hasn't applied for public housing because he doesn't want to leave his roommates to live alone and expects to spend the rest of his life living in a cage.
His only income is HK$4,000 ($515) in government assistance each month. After paying his rent, he's left with $2,700 ($350), or about HK$90 ($11.60) a day.
"It's impossible for me to save," said Leung, who never married and has no children to lean on for support.
Leung and his roommates, all of them single, elderly men, wash their clothes in a bucket. The bathroom facilities consist of two toilet stalls, one of them adjoining a squat toilet that doubles as a shower stall. There is no kitchen, just a small room with a sink. The hallway walls have turned brown with dirt accumulated over the years.
While cage homes, which sprang up in the 1950s to cater mostly to single men coming in from mainland China, are becoming rarer, other types of substandard housing such as cubicle apartments are growing as more families are pushed into poverty. Nearly 1.19 million people were living in poverty in the first half of last year, up from 1.15 million in 2011, according to the Hong Kong Council Of Social Services. There's no official poverty line but it's generally defined as half of the city's median income.
Hong Kong poor living in cages and cubicles
Hong Kong leader's policy vow highlights plight of poor living in cages, cubicles amid wealth
Associated Press By Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer | Associated Press – Thu, Feb 7, 2013 5:06 PM SGT
Many poor residents have applied for public housing but face years of waiting. Nearly three-quarters of 500 low-income families questioned by Oxfam Hong Kong in a recent survey had been on the list for more than 4 years without being offered a flat.
Lee Tat-fong, is one of those waiting. The 63-year-old is hoping she and her two grandchildren can get out of the cubicle apartment they share in their Wan Chai neighborhood, but she has no idea how long it will take.
Lee, who suffers from diabetes and back problems, takes care of Amy, 9, and Steven, 13, because their father has disappeared and their mother — her daughter — can't get a permit to come to Hong Kong from mainland China. An uncle occasionally lends a hand.
The three live in a 50-square-foot room, one of seven created by subdividing an existing apartment. A bunk bed takes up half the space, a cabinet most of the rest, leaving barely enough room to stand up in. The room is jammed with their possessions: plastic bags filled with clothes, an electric fan, Amy's stuffed animals, cooking utensils.
"There's too little space here. We can barely breathe," said Lee, who shares the bottom bunk with her grandson.
They share the communal kitchen and two toilets with the other residents. Welfare pays their HK$3,500 monthly rent and the three get another HK$6,000 for living expenses but the money is never enough, especially with two growing children to feed. Lee said the two often wanted to have McDonalds because they were still hungry after dinner, which on a recent night was meager portions of rice, vegetables and meat.
The struggle to raise her two grandkids in such conditions was wearing her out.
"It's exhausting," she said. "Sometimes I get so pent up with anger, and I cry but no one sees because I hide away."
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/hong-kong-poor-living-cages-074040859.html
___
Hong Kong leader's policy vow highlights plight of poor living in cages, cubicles amid wealth
Associated PressBy Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer | Associated Press – Thu, Feb 7, 2013 5:06 PM SGT
HONG KONG (AP) -- For many of the richest people in Hong Kong, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, home is a mansion with an expansive view from the heights of Victoria Peak. For some of the poorest, like Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage.
The 67-year-old former butcher pays 1,300 Hong Kong dollars ($167) a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.
The cages, stacked on top of each other, measure 1.5 square meters (16 square feet). To keep bedbugs away, Leung and his roommates put thin pads, bamboo mats, even old linoleum on their cages' wooden planks instead of mattresses.
"I've been bitten so much I'm used to it," said Leung, rolling up the sleeve of his oversized blue fleece jacket to reveal a red mark on his hand. "There's nothing you can do about it. I've got to live here. I've got to survive," he said as he let out a phlegmy cough.
Some 100,000 people in the former British colony live in what's known as inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization, a social welfare group. The category also includes apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks. They're a grim counterpoint to the southern Chinese city's renowned material affluence.
Forced by skyrocketing housing prices to live in cramped, dirty and unsafe conditions, their plight also highlights one of the biggest headaches facing Hong Kong's unpopular Beijing-backed leader: growing public rage over the city's housing crisis.
Leung Chun-ying took office as Hong Kong's chief executive in July pledging to provide more affordable housing in a bid to cool the anger. Home prices rose 23 percent in the first 10 months of 2012 and have doubled since bottoming out in 2008 during the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund said in a report last month. Rents have followed a similar trajectory.
The soaring costs are putting decent homes out of reach of a large portion of the population while stoking resentment of the government, which controls all land for development, and a coterie of wealthy property developers. Housing costs have been fuelled by easy credit thanks to ultralow interest rates that policymakers can't raise because the currency is pegged to the dollar. Money flooding in from mainland Chinese and foreign investors looking for higher returns has exacerbated the rise.
In his inaugural policy speech in January, the chief executive said the inability of the middle class to buy homes posed a threat to social stability and promised to make it a priority to tackle the housing shortage.
"Many families have to move into smaller or older flats, or even factory buildings," he said. "Cramped living space in cage homes, cubicle apartments and sub-divided flats has become the reluctant choice for tens of thousands of Hong Kong people," he said, as he unveiled plans to boost supply of public housing in the medium term from its current level of 15,000 apartments a year.
His comments mark a distinct shift from predecessor Donald Tsang, who ignored the problem. Legislators and activists, however, slammed Leung for a lack of measures to boost the supply in the short term. Some 210,000 people are on the waiting list for public housing, about double from 2006. About a third of Hong Kong's 7.1 million population lives in public rental flats. When apartments bought with government subsidies are included, the figure rises to nearly half.
Anger over housing prices is a common theme in increasingly frequent anti-government protests. Legislator Frederick Fung warns there will be more if the problem can't be solved. He compared the effect on the poor to a lab experiment.
"When we were in secondary school, we had some sort of experiment where we put many rats in a small box. They would bite each other," said Fung. "When living spaces are so congested, they would make people feel uneasy, desperate," and angry at the government, he said.
Leung, the cage dweller, had little faith that the government could do anything to change the situation of people like him.
"It's not whether I believe him or not, but they always talk this way. What hope is there?" said Leung, who has been living in cage homes since he stopped working at a market stall after losing part of a finger 20 years ago. He hasn't applied for public housing because he doesn't want to leave his roommates to live alone and expects to spend the rest of his life living in a cage.
His only income is HK$4,000 ($515) in government assistance each month. After paying his rent, he's left with $2,700 ($350), or about HK$90 ($11.60) a day.
"It's impossible for me to save," said Leung, who never married and has no children to lean on for support.
Leung and his roommates, all of them single, elderly men, wash their clothes in a bucket. The bathroom facilities consist of two toilet stalls, one of them adjoining a squat toilet that doubles as a shower stall. There is no kitchen, just a small room with a sink. The hallway walls have turned brown with dirt accumulated over the years.
While cage homes, which sprang up in the 1950s to cater mostly to single men coming in from mainland China, are becoming rarer, other types of substandard housing such as cubicle apartments are growing as more families are pushed into poverty. Nearly 1.19 million people were living in poverty in the first half of last year, up from 1.15 million in 2011, according to the Hong Kong Council Of Social Services. There's no official poverty line but it's generally defined as half of the city's median income.
Hong Kong poor living in cages and cubicles
Hong Kong leader's policy vow highlights plight of poor living in cages, cubicles amid wealth
Associated Press By Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer | Associated Press – Thu, Feb 7, 2013 5:06 PM SGT
Many poor residents have applied for public housing but face years of waiting. Nearly three-quarters of 500 low-income families questioned by Oxfam Hong Kong in a recent survey had been on the list for more than 4 years without being offered a flat.
Lee Tat-fong, is one of those waiting. The 63-year-old is hoping she and her two grandchildren can get out of the cubicle apartment they share in their Wan Chai neighborhood, but she has no idea how long it will take.
Lee, who suffers from diabetes and back problems, takes care of Amy, 9, and Steven, 13, because their father has disappeared and their mother — her daughter — can't get a permit to come to Hong Kong from mainland China. An uncle occasionally lends a hand.
The three live in a 50-square-foot room, one of seven created by subdividing an existing apartment. A bunk bed takes up half the space, a cabinet most of the rest, leaving barely enough room to stand up in. The room is jammed with their possessions: plastic bags filled with clothes, an electric fan, Amy's stuffed animals, cooking utensils.
"There's too little space here. We can barely breathe," said Lee, who shares the bottom bunk with her grandson.
They share the communal kitchen and two toilets with the other residents. Welfare pays their HK$3,500 monthly rent and the three get another HK$6,000 for living expenses but the money is never enough, especially with two growing children to feed. Lee said the two often wanted to have McDonalds because they were still hungry after dinner, which on a recent night was meager portions of rice, vegetables and meat.
The struggle to raise her two grandkids in such conditions was wearing her out.
"It's exhausting," she said. "Sometimes I get so pent up with anger, and I cry but no one sees because I hide away."
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/hong-kong-poor-living-cages-074040859.html
___
How positive thinking toppled Pinochet
How positive thinking toppled Pinochet
By Rebecca Thomas Arts and entertainment reporter, BBC News
Much has been documented on the rise and fall of Chile's brutal military dictator General Augusto Pinochet yet little on the men who brought about his demise. The Oscar-nominated foreign-language film, No, seeks to redress the balance.
The Spanish-speaking film, starring Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, is set in Chile in 1988, when a public referendum was called on Pinochet's 15-year coup-seized leadership.
The people were to be asked to vote Yes for a continuation of Pinochet's rule or No for him to go.
While the Yes campaigners go down a hackneyed route of vaunting Pinochet's great leadership and trashing the opposition, the No camp realise a radical new approach is needed. The people are scared and sceptical of a corrupt process and will take some persuading to even go to the polls.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
They couldn't find people from the Yes campaign, there was only one person who was known but he didn't want to talk - a victory has many generals but a defeat has none”
Gael Garcia Bernal
The answer is to hire advertising hotshot Rene Saavedra, who says they must harness the strategies of product advertising, namely the power of the positive message.
"Many people know how Pinochet got into power by overthrowing President Allende but very few know how he got out," says Bernal who plays Saavedra.
"Even I, who am from Latin America, didn't know about the campaign that went on. I didn't know how important publicity was to the movement and what actually went on.
"It was one of the most interesting things about the film and encouraged me to do it."
Unified front
Used to working on promotions for products such as fizzy drinks, Saavedra dismisses focusing on the atrocities of Pinochet's rule to take the sweet shop approach to the Nos' campaign: shiny imagery of rainbows and a beautiful future full of sun-soaked days of family fun.
"The film sees the birth of democracy in Chile through the eyes of a publicist," says Bernal.
"An archetypal publicist doesn't exist, but this character is fascinating because of his joyful attitude.
"He has a childish fascination with toys and things like his new microwave. These kind of things gave the character an interesting way to see the story."
The No camp, a group made up of 16 political parties, are unsurprisingly unconvinced. But they pull together behind Saavedra in a spirit of unity and camaraderie.
t's a dynamic that followed through into the cast, many of whom are the real-life members of the No campaign.
"There was the fraternal aspect to making the movie, which got me closer to the drama and to the freedom that that moment in history experienced," says Bernal.
As for the members of the Yes campaign, they made a point of making themselves elusive.
"All the protagonists from the campaign were very up for making the movie. Some acted as themselves and others play their antagonists," says Bernal.
"They couldn't find people from the Yes campaign. There was only one person who was known but he didn't want to talk. A victory has many generals but a defeat has none."
One of the original No team is Eugenio Garcia, on whom Bernal's character is based. Garcia, a smiling and gentle man, says he was taken aback when approached by Chilean director Pablo Larrain.
"It was a surprise for me as this happened 25 years ago and then I forgot, did my job and got on with my life," says Garcia.
"Now when I see the movie, it's very emotional. It's a very good interpretation of how we all felt at the time, our fears and anticipation. It makes me remember all the emotions. It's beautiful."
Underhand tactics
Meeting Garcia was a true honour and also valuable to understanding and playing Saavedra, say Bernal.
It all adds to the film's air of authenticity, which Larrain has taken pains to achieve through the use of an old U-matic camera to help blend news footage from the era with the acting scenes.
At heart, Saavedra is just a simple man of the people, deeply concerned for the young son who lives with him and longing to be reconciled with his estranged wife.
When the Yes campaign hit back with underhand tactics, Saavedra feels the threats on a deeply personal level, rather than as part and parcel of the dirty game of politics.
It sums up the other feeling pervading No: intimacy.
This, Bernal explains, is down to Larrain. No is the final part in Larrain's trilogy covering the Pinochet era. The first two films were Tony Manero and Post Mortem.
No signals a closure for the director, who was a child at the time of the events of the film and whose parents were Yes voters.
"It's a film that is very personal to Pablo. He was 12 when this happened," says Bernal. "It is, for him and other Chileans, a reconciliation, not just with society or the country, but with one's own history."
Ultimately, the No campaign is triumphant. An unexpected 97% of registered voters turn out at the polls. The No campaign wins almost 56% of the vote.
Pinochet stepped down in 1990 after losing democratic presidential and parliamentary elections. When he died in 2006, he was still to stand trial for human rights abuses, as ordered by the Chilean courts.
This "injustice" is just one of the many issues that make No relevant to today's audience, says the politically-minded Bernal. But would he ever turn his interest into a career?
"I am very interested in politics," says the actor, who is a big supporter of human rights group Amnesty International.
"But as for going into it seriously in a formal way, I can't see that happening. Then again how many politicians have said the same?"
No is released in the UK on Friday, 8 February 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21321833
By Rebecca Thomas Arts and entertainment reporter, BBC News
Much has been documented on the rise and fall of Chile's brutal military dictator General Augusto Pinochet yet little on the men who brought about his demise. The Oscar-nominated foreign-language film, No, seeks to redress the balance.
The Spanish-speaking film, starring Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, is set in Chile in 1988, when a public referendum was called on Pinochet's 15-year coup-seized leadership.
The people were to be asked to vote Yes for a continuation of Pinochet's rule or No for him to go.
While the Yes campaigners go down a hackneyed route of vaunting Pinochet's great leadership and trashing the opposition, the No camp realise a radical new approach is needed. The people are scared and sceptical of a corrupt process and will take some persuading to even go to the polls.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
They couldn't find people from the Yes campaign, there was only one person who was known but he didn't want to talk - a victory has many generals but a defeat has none”
Gael Garcia Bernal
The answer is to hire advertising hotshot Rene Saavedra, who says they must harness the strategies of product advertising, namely the power of the positive message.
"Many people know how Pinochet got into power by overthrowing President Allende but very few know how he got out," says Bernal who plays Saavedra.
"Even I, who am from Latin America, didn't know about the campaign that went on. I didn't know how important publicity was to the movement and what actually went on.
"It was one of the most interesting things about the film and encouraged me to do it."
Unified front
Used to working on promotions for products such as fizzy drinks, Saavedra dismisses focusing on the atrocities of Pinochet's rule to take the sweet shop approach to the Nos' campaign: shiny imagery of rainbows and a beautiful future full of sun-soaked days of family fun.
"The film sees the birth of democracy in Chile through the eyes of a publicist," says Bernal.
"An archetypal publicist doesn't exist, but this character is fascinating because of his joyful attitude.
"He has a childish fascination with toys and things like his new microwave. These kind of things gave the character an interesting way to see the story."
The No camp, a group made up of 16 political parties, are unsurprisingly unconvinced. But they pull together behind Saavedra in a spirit of unity and camaraderie.
t's a dynamic that followed through into the cast, many of whom are the real-life members of the No campaign.
"There was the fraternal aspect to making the movie, which got me closer to the drama and to the freedom that that moment in history experienced," says Bernal.
As for the members of the Yes campaign, they made a point of making themselves elusive.
"All the protagonists from the campaign were very up for making the movie. Some acted as themselves and others play their antagonists," says Bernal.
"They couldn't find people from the Yes campaign. There was only one person who was known but he didn't want to talk. A victory has many generals but a defeat has none."
One of the original No team is Eugenio Garcia, on whom Bernal's character is based. Garcia, a smiling and gentle man, says he was taken aback when approached by Chilean director Pablo Larrain.
"It was a surprise for me as this happened 25 years ago and then I forgot, did my job and got on with my life," says Garcia.
"Now when I see the movie, it's very emotional. It's a very good interpretation of how we all felt at the time, our fears and anticipation. It makes me remember all the emotions. It's beautiful."
Underhand tactics
Meeting Garcia was a true honour and also valuable to understanding and playing Saavedra, say Bernal.
It all adds to the film's air of authenticity, which Larrain has taken pains to achieve through the use of an old U-matic camera to help blend news footage from the era with the acting scenes.
At heart, Saavedra is just a simple man of the people, deeply concerned for the young son who lives with him and longing to be reconciled with his estranged wife.
When the Yes campaign hit back with underhand tactics, Saavedra feels the threats on a deeply personal level, rather than as part and parcel of the dirty game of politics.
It sums up the other feeling pervading No: intimacy.
This, Bernal explains, is down to Larrain. No is the final part in Larrain's trilogy covering the Pinochet era. The first two films were Tony Manero and Post Mortem.
No signals a closure for the director, who was a child at the time of the events of the film and whose parents were Yes voters.
"It's a film that is very personal to Pablo. He was 12 when this happened," says Bernal. "It is, for him and other Chileans, a reconciliation, not just with society or the country, but with one's own history."
Ultimately, the No campaign is triumphant. An unexpected 97% of registered voters turn out at the polls. The No campaign wins almost 56% of the vote.
Pinochet stepped down in 1990 after losing democratic presidential and parliamentary elections. When he died in 2006, he was still to stand trial for human rights abuses, as ordered by the Chilean courts.
This "injustice" is just one of the many issues that make No relevant to today's audience, says the politically-minded Bernal. But would he ever turn his interest into a career?
"I am very interested in politics," says the actor, who is a big supporter of human rights group Amnesty International.
"But as for going into it seriously in a formal way, I can't see that happening. Then again how many politicians have said the same?"
No is released in the UK on Friday, 8 February 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21321833
The Jury is Still Out on Baby Doc Duvalier, the Witchdoctor and former ruler of Haiti
7 February 2013
Jean-Claude Duvalier fails to attend Haiti rights trial
The former ruler of Haiti Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier has failed to attend a hearing in Port-au-Prince on allegations of crimes against humanity.
His lawyer called it "careless" for the court to schedule the appeal audience on 7 February – the 27th anniversary of Mr Duvalier's flight into exile.
A judge agreed to postpone the former ruler's appearance to 21 February, and has not punished him for his absence.
This was the second time Mr Duvalier failed to appear at a court hearing.
Earlier, international human rights groups urged authorities not to drop the case against Mr Duvalier.
A number of activists, students and relatives of victims gathered outside the court, expecting the former ruler's appearance.
One of Mr Duvalier's lawyers says the case should be thrown out.
"Duvalier has been trialled in France, in Haiti and in Switzerland. He can't be trialled once again," Frizto Canton told AFP news agency.
However, Amnesty International and the Open Society Justice Initiative said Mr Duvalier "must not evade justice" for alleged crimes against humanity.
In January 2012, a court ruled that the alleged abuses had expired under Haiti's statute of limitations.
Mr Duvalier unexpectedly returned to Haiti in 2011 after 25 years in exile, prompting the Haitian authorities to open an investigation into crimes allegedly committed during his 1971-86 rule.
Embezzling, murder, torture
He denies all the accusations against him.
A judge decided that he should stand trial for embezzling public funds but ruled that the statute of limitations had run out on charges of murder, arbitrary arrest, torture and disappearances.
Alleged victims and their relatives have appealed against this ruling.
A first hearing was postponed when Mr Duvalier failed to appear in court on 31 January.
He was then ordered to attend Thursday's hearing, but was absent again.
International law requires that he should stand trial for alleged crimes against humanity, the Open Society Justice Initiative said.
Amnesty International has also argued that such crimes are not subject to a statute of limitations.
"With the case of Jean-Claude Duvalier, it is the whole credibility of the Haitian justice system which is at stake," Amnesty said.
Jean-Claude Duvalier was just 19 when he inherited the title of president-for-life from his father, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who had ruled Haiti since 1957.
Like his father, he relied on a brutal militia known as the Tontons Macoutes to control the country.
In 1986 he was forced from power by a popular uprising and US diplomatic pressure, and went into exile in France.
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