don't-hang-up-man

Wed Jan 30, 1:28 AM

TOKYO (AFP) - A lonely Japanese man has been arrested for allegedly calling directory assistance thousands of times because he liked to be scolded by female operators, police and reports said Wednesday.

Takahiro Fujinuma -- who is 37, single and unemployed -- reportedly would whisper "darling" as he tried to start a conversation and then pleaded with operators not to hang up.

He was arrested Tuesday in Tokyo on charges of obstructing the business of service operator NTT Solco, part of telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.

He placed 2,600 calls to directory help -- reached in Japan by dialling 104 -- between early June and mid-November, a police spokesman said.

But Japanese media said he is suspected of starting his habit in 2004 and calling 104 more than 10,000 times.

He reportedly told police that he was lonely and grew to enjoy annoying the operators.

"I would go into ecstasy when a lady scolded me," he said, as quoted by Jiji Press.

Telephone operators -- who in Japan are almost always women -- nicknamed him the "don't-hang-up-man."

His calls usually came late and sometimes exceeded 200 times a night, Jiji Press said

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The Price of Democracy

'Forced circumcision': the latest weapon in Kenya's ethnic strife

2 hours, 43 minutes ago

NAIVASHA, Kenya (AFP) - Lying on a blood-stained stretcher, Caleb's face is convulsed in pain. "The Kikuyus circumcised me by force," he says, moments before losing consciousness in the hospital's sweltering heat.

The 24-year-old Kenyan is from the Luo tribe, which unlike the rival Kikuyu tribe, does not practice male circumcision.

But in the violent context of Kenya's post-election strife, what has become known as "forced circumcisions" are often outright penile amputations performed with rusty machetes by angry mobs.

In recent days, the usually peaceful town of Naivasha, less than 100 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of Nairobi, has seen some of the worst violence between rival tribal gangs.

The killings were ignited by last month's disputed presidential poll, which saw opposition leader Raila Odinga -- a Luo -- claim that Mwai Kibaki -- a Kikuyu -- had rigged his way to re-election.

"When you cut the genital parts, you bleed a lot and there are a lot of chances that you may die. You suffer like hell," said one medical aid worker at Naivasha hospital.

Such cases of genital mutilations have reported in several parts of the country, notably in several Nairobi slums, since the election dispute touched off a cycle of tit-for-tat killings between rival tribes.

Before passing out from pain, Caleb finds the strength to recount his ordeal.

On Sunday night, "a group of eight men with pangas (machetes) entered. They asked for my ID," he says, explaining that his attackers wanted to see his name and determine which tribe he belonged to.

Voting in the December presidential poll was conducted largely along tribal lines, with the dominant Kikuyus supporting the incumbent while Luos and allied tribes rallied behind Odinga.

"They slashed me and they circumcised me by force. I screamed a lot and cried for help: 'Mum, I don't want to die far away from home'," he says.

Caleb complains that the police arrived on the scene but eventually left him in a poll of blood and made away with the machetes and other weapons left behind by the Kikuyu gang.

His forced circumcision was not the only mutilation he suffered at the hands of his attackers.

Machete wounds to his head are starting to dry up and a blood-soaked compress drips down his ankle, as he awaits treatment from Naivasha hospital's overwhelmed staff.

"The Kikuyus don't want us here. They say we are taking their jobs. When I am well, I will go back home. There is no point of risking my life here," Caleb says.

The young man, who moved to Naivasha alone in November to work in one of the area's many flower farms, is from Kisumu, the country's third city and an opposition stronghold where Luos are the majority.

What started as nationwide protests against Kibaki's re-election rapidly degenerated into ethnically-driven revenge killings, with dominant tribes in each region expelling minorities.

The violence spread to Naivasha last week, with Kikuyus organising themselves in gangs to drive out mainly Luos whom they say have settled their homeland.

"We want to remove the Luos from here because they removed us from Kisumu and Eldoret," says one Kikuyu who refused to reveal his name.

Kisumu and Eldoret are two of the main cities in western Kenya, which saw the worst of the violence that erupterd in the immediate aftermath of the elections.

The young Kikuyu and a mob of armed fellow tribesmen shout "Go home" in unison, standing defiantly outside a police station where some 200 terrified Luos have found temporary shelter and await a bus that will spirit them out of Naivasha.

Close to 1,000 people have died in protests, riots, police raids and tribal clashes across the country since the election.

Kircher Society Essential Library of Automata via Morbid Anatomy

Raw Democracy

Machete-wielding youths hunt Kikuyus as ethnic bloodletting spreads in Kenya

2 hours, 55 minutes ago

By Katharine Houreld, The Associated Press

KISUMU, Kenya - Thousands of machete-wielding youths set buses and homes ablaze and blocked roads with burning tires Monday as they hunted down members of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe. One driver was burned alive in his minibus because he was Kikuyu.

The death toll from Kenya's disputed presidential election soared over 800.

"The road is covered in blood. It's chaos," said Baraka Karama, a journalist for independent Kenya Television in Kisumu.

A month of ethnic bloodletting triggered by rigged presidential elections gathered frightening momentum in Kenya, spreading from town to town in the western Rift Valley, scene of the worst clashes.

There was no sign of relief from international mediators trying to persuade politicians to resolve the crisis that has erupted over Kibaki's re-election in Dec. 27 balloting that international and local observers say was marred by a rigged vote tally.

Columns of smoke rose from burning homes in Kisumu.

"We wish to find one, a Kikuyu .... We will butcher them like a cow," said David Babgy, 24, who was among 50 young men stopping buses at a roadblock of burned cars and uprooted lamp posts.

The only deaths reported there Monday, apart from the burned bus driver, were people shot by police whom human rights groups accuse of using excessive force.

As youths set buses ablaze at Kisumu bus station Monday morning, police fired tear gas, then opened fire. A morgue attendant said one man whose body was brought in had been shot in the back of the head. A school cleaner was also hit and killed by a stray bullet fired by a police officer, said Charles Odhiambo, a high school teacher.

Fred Madanji, a petrol station attendant, said he saw two other "protesters" shot in the back and killed as they ran away from police Monday afternoon.

In villages around Eldoret, Kalenjin youths used machetes to kill four Kikuyus and stoned two other to death, according to witnesses. A military helicopter tried to land at Cheptiret village but was prevented from doing so by youths who set grasslands ablaze.

In Kakamega, on the edge of a wildlife preserve, gangs looted and set ablaze a downtown hotel and two wholesalers, said Rev. Allam Kizili of the local Pentecostal Church.

Police fired tear gas to try to stop the violence, he added. There was no immediate word on casualties. The ethnic makeup of that violence was not clear.

In Naivasha, Kenya's flower-exporting capital on a freshwater lake inhabited by pink flamingos, some 2,000 people from rival tribes faced off Monday, taunting each other with machetes and clubs inset with nails.

A handful of police holding a line between them periodically fired live bullets into the air. The mobs retreated, only to regroup.

British colonizers seized large tracts of land to cultivate fertile farms in the Rift Valley, traditionally home to the Kalenjin and Masai ethnic groups.

After independence in 1963, then-president Jomo Kenyatta flooded reclaimed farmlands with his Kikuyu people, creating resentment that exists to this day.

Kikuyus also are resented for their domination of politics and the economy, a success cemented by endemic corruption and patronage.

The bloodshed has transformed this once-stable African country, pitting longtime neighbours against one another and turning tourist towns into no-go zones.

Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga blame each other. Human rights groups and officials like Britain's visiting minister for Africa, Mark Malloch-Brown, contend some of the violence is organized by rival political groups.

Malloch-Brown said after meetings in Nairobi on Monday with Kibaki, Odinga, and their mediator, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, that little headway was being made.

". . . The level of anger between the two sides is just growing exponentially," he said.

Kibaki has said he is open to direct talks with Odinga, but that his position as president is not negotiable. Odinga says Kibaki must step down and only new elections will bring peace.

As the politicians bickered, the toll from weekend violence still was coming in.

In Nakuru, provincial capital of the Rift Valley, 64 bodies were counted Monday at the morgue, said a worker who asked that his name not be used.

In Naivasha, district commissioner Katee Mwanza said at least 22 people were killed on the weekend. Nineteen of them were Luos, Odinga's tribe, chased by a gang of Kikuyus through a slum and trapped in a shanty that they set on fire, said police commander Grace Kakai.

This Day in History

* 98 - Trajan becomes Roman Emperor after the death of Nerva.
* 1142 - Wrongful execution of noted Song Dynasty General Yue Fei.
* 1186 - Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, weds Constance of Sicily.
* 1343 - Pope Clement VI issues the Bull Unigenitus.
* 1593 - Vatican opens 7 year trial against scholar Giordano Bruno.
* 1606 - Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, and ending in their execution on January 31.
* 1695 - Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his death in 1703.
* 1785 - The University of Georgia is founded, the first public university in the United States.
* 1825 - U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory (in what is present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears."
* 1870 - The first college sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, is formed at DePauw University.
* 1888 - In Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society is founded.
* 1909 - The Young Left is founded in Norway.
* 1918 - The first hostilities occurred in the Finnish Civil War.
* 1939 - First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
* 1944 - World War II: The two-year Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
* 1945 - World War II: The Red Army arrives at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.
* 1951 - Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flats.
* 1967 - Apollo program: Apollo 1 - Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.
* 1967 - More than sixty nations sign the Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.
* 1973 - Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War, Colonel William Nolde falls, becoming the conflict's last recorded American combat casualty.
* 1983 - Pilot shaft of World's longest subaqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō breaks through.
* 1996 - Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane, in a military coup.
* 1996 - Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
* 2007 - Approximately 100,000 protesters converge on the Mall in Washington, D.C. for the January 27, 2007 anti-war protest sponsored by United for Peace and Justice.

Changing Blood Type

Australian girl switched blood type after transplant: doctors

Thu Jan 24, 12:56 PM

SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian girl spontaneously changed blood groups and adopted her donor's immune system after a liver transplant, in what doctors treating her said Thursday was the first known case of its type.

Demi-Lee Brennan was aged nine and seriously ill with liver failure when she received the transplant, doctors at a top Sydney children's hospital told AFP.

Nine months later they discovered she had changed blood types and that her immune system had switched over to that of the donor after stem cells from the new liver migrated to her bone marrow.

She is now a healthy 15-year-old, Michael Stormon, a hepatologist treating her, told AFP. He said he had given several presentations on the case around the world and had heard of none like it.

"It is extremely unusual -- in fact we don't know of any other instance in which this happened," Stormon told AFP from the Children's Hospital at Westmead.

"In effect she had had a bone marrow transplant. The majority of her immune system had also switched over to that of the donor."

An article on the case was published in Thursday's edition of the leading US medical journal The New England Journal of Medicine.

Brennan's mother Kerrie Mills described the recovery as "miraculous" while the patient herself told a news conference that doctors had given her life back to her.

"I just can't thank them enough. It's like my second chance at life," Brennan said.

Doctors who treated Brennan are interested to know if the case could have other applications in transplant surgery, where rejection of donor organs by the recipient's immune system is a major hurdle.

Stormon said it appeared that Brennan may have been fortunate because a "sequence of serendipitous events", including a post-transplantation infection, may have given the stem cells from her donor's liver the chance to proliferate in the bone marrow, where blood cells develop.

The task now was to establish whether the same sort of outcome could be replicated in other transplant patients, he said.

"The challenge for us now is to try and figure out how this occurred," Stormon said.

One possibility is that the series of events she experienced all weakened her immune system enough for the stem cells to migrate to the bone marrow and proliferate, Stormon said.

These factors include the particular type of liver failure she had, a post-operation infection with the virus cytomegalovirus, and immunosuppressive drugs.

"To try to replicate that is easier said than done," Stormon said, but added the case could still potentially be of crucial importance.

"The holy grail of transplant medicine is immuno-tolerance. She exemplifies that this can occur."

Caste Descrimination in England

"Pet" girl kicked off bus for wearing leash

Wed Jan 23, 1:24 PM

LONDON (Reuters) - A British bus company has apologized to a girl who is led around on a leash by her boyfriend and describes herself as a human pet after one of its drivers threw her off a bus.

Tasha Maltby, 19, told British newspapers she was the "pet" of her 25-year-old fiance Dani Graves.

Pictures showed her dressed in black Gothic-style clothing with silver buckles on a silver chain -- which the driver of a bus from the firm Arriva took exception to.

She told the Daily Mail newspaper Wednesday she was thrown off and told: "We don't let freaks and dogs like you on."

Arriva would not comment on specifics but said it apologized if the couple felt they had been discriminated against. It added, however, that the driver was worried about safety and the company told Maltby to take the leash off in the future.

"We have spoken to the driver who has talked about health and safety," a spokesman said. "Should she be attached to a chain and something happens on the bus, that could be dangerous. All we are saying is that she is very welcome to use the buses but not when she is on her lead."

Maltby -- who lives on state benefits and got engaged in November -- said her choice of lifestyle might seem unusual but was harmless.

"I am a pet," she told the Daily Mail. "I generally act animal-like and I lead a really easy life. I don't cook or clean and I don't go anywhere without Dani. It might seem strange but it makes us both happy. It's my culture and my choice. It isn't hurting anyone."

(Editing by Michael Winfrey)

Witch Trials in Liberia

Written by NIAO development assoc, USA
Sunday, 20 January 2008

200px-liberia_grandgedehWitchcraft Court Opened in Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County, Republic of Liberia

According to information recently received from some outstanding Krahn citizens in Zwedru, Honorable Chris Bailey, Superintendent of Grand Gedeh County, has opened a witchcraft Court to combat recurring illnesses and other chronic diseases instead of modern medicine. He appointed former AFL General, now the Inspector of Grand Gedeh County, as a Witchcraft Court Judge.

Whether this particular court was created by legislative enactment or by an executive order of the President of Liberia for Grand Gedeh County is unclear. We, the citizens from Niao Clan, Tchien District, Grand Gedeh County, residing in the Americas, are earnestly requesting the Honorable Minister of Internal Affairs, Republic of Liberia to look into the legitimacy of this Witchcraft Court opened by the Superintendent of Grand Gedeh County and presided over by former AFL General Joseph Jarlee

According to sources from Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County, the Witchcraft Court Judge, General Joseph Jarlee, recruited a female pastor, one “Mother” Nancy Phillips that he sends to Niao Clan to search for witchcrafts, using the children to accuse their parents. When she goes to Niao Clan and meets a child with a fever, she will pretend that she is there to pray for the child. After her brief “prayer”, she will take the child with the fever and coax him/her to accuse his/her parent(s) as responsible through witchcraft for the child’s illness.

Mother Phillips will then return to Zwedru and report to Judge Jarlee on her mission. Judge Jarlee, upon this report, will send police officers to arrest the child’s parent or parents, undress them, torture them and under this duress extract a confession from them. Once they “confess”, he will then impose a fine on them: a goat or sheep and five hundred dollars for court cost. Whether these goats, sheep and cash fines go into Liberian Government Treasury or not is another matter. One of our concerns is whether by so doing, the child is cured of the fever. Or is this designed to humiliate and smear the good names and reputations of the Niao citizens?

One of the Niao citizens accused of witchcraft, undressed, tortured before his children, mother, wife, sisters, in-laws and other relatives, and sent to Zwedru before the witchcraft court Judge Joseph Jarlee, died a few days after returning home to Naio due to the humiliation & social degradation he suffered. The sickening part of this whole thing, Hon. Minister, is that at times, this Mother Phillips will go to Niao, organize a group of young children, and in the middle of the night, instruct them to stone the house of anybody she considers engaged in witchcraft while the family is asleep.

For example, a year or so ago, the late Zah Moses Kpie of Pola Town was perceived by Mother Phillips as a man who engages in witchcraft. While he and his family were asleep, a group of children and young men stoned his house and damaged some of his properties. When Mr. Kpie lodged complaint to the self-appointed Paramount Chief, Mr. Zehyee Moses Dehyee, he sided with the defendants and fined Zah Moses Kpie the sum of $500.00, a goat and a sheep. The late Zah Moses Kpie realizing that there was no way out because Witchcraft Judge Joseph Jarlee will do the same, paid the fines, returned to his hometown and hanged himself. In another incident one month after the suicide of Mr. Kpie, when one Ms Mary Dehyee’s child died, she was accused of killing her own child in witchcraft. She was treated in similar manner as Mr. Kpie and she also hanged herself. She was a sister of the self appointed Paramount Chief, Zehyee Moses Dehyee. We wonder whether the “Chief” Zehyee Moses Dehyee reported these incidents to the Superintendent of Grand Gedeh County, to you the Internal Affairs Minister, and on to the President of Liberia.

In October 2007, a child assuming that his flu was caused by witchcraft reported this to Mother Phillips when she visited the same Pola Town in Niao Clan. His father was arrested, undressed and tortured based on accusation of witchcraft by Mother Phillips. Seemingly for fear that he was going to die from the ill-treatment, he also accused others, including women. All the accused were also arrested, undressed, tortured and brought to Zwedru to the witchcraft court presided over by General Jarlee. These people were made to bring goats, sheep, and money for court cost and then made to sign surety notes that they will keep the child from illness of any kind including flu and malaria as long as the child will live.

When they brought this group of Niao citizens into Zwedru, we contacted Honorable Zoe Pennue who also represents the people in Niao Clan in the Liberian Legislature and he confirmed that there is a witchcraft court in Zwedru and Superintendent Christopher Bailey is aware of such court being in operation in the County.

In November 2007, one Joseph Gaye was accused by a Helena Gaye—no relation to Mr. Gaye but she is sister-in-law to Mother Phillips—of sprinkling a child’s blood around his house in Janzon, Naio in her vision.

Being a former General Clan Chief, Mr. Joseph Gaye challenged the female pastor, the legitimacy of the witchcraft court, the words of the children and Ms Helena Gaye’s vision. When the matter went before the Honorable Witchcraft Court Judge, he fined Mr. Joseph Gaye 1,000.00 Liberian dollars, stating that the female pastor is a Liberian Government appointee and Mr. Joseph Gaye should not call her a liar. Mr. Joseph Gaye paid the 1,000.00 Liberian dollars in protest and appealed to witchcraft court Judge Joseph Jarlee’s decision in a judicial court in Zwedru. Hon. Minister, we are aware that there exists a separation of the church and the state in Liberia. Superintendent Bailey did understand this, therefore, he employed mother Nancy Phillips in his county government to arrest torture and undress Krahn citizens in Grand Gedeh County Liberia.

Hon. Minister, because of the medieval ways in which Superintendent Christopher Bailey of Grand Gedeh County and his County Inspector/Witchcraft Court Judge Joseph Jarlee are dealing with the recurring illnesses and other diseases in Niao Clan, people may seemingly be dying every month that could have lived if taken to the hospital. According to our inquiries about other areas in Grand Gedeh County, we gathered that this situation does not exist only in Naio alone. There are allegations that in the Goway (Gorbo) area, two persons were made to drink “sassawood” for being accused of witchcraft and they died from drinking this liquid made from a tree bark. In the Gbahzon area, it was alleged that eleven persons were accused by one Boway of witchcraft. He tortured them and forced them to drink “sassawood” laced with Lysol. All eleven died according to the allegations. In the Tchien area, a man was accused of witchcraft and beaten in his hometown. As a result, he moved from his town to live in another town.

Please let us clarify why we titled Zehyee Moses Dehyee as a self-appointed Paramount Chief. Zehyee Moses Dehyee was appointed by his peers in Niao Clan as a General Town Chief during the late President Samuel K. Doe’s Administration. When civil war erupted on December 24, 1989, everybody in Niao Clan went to the Republic of the Ivory Coast for safety. To date, there has not been any election to make Mr. Dehyee paramount chief which he wasn’t before the war. And to our best knowledge, there has not been any official action by Government to say that Mr. Dehyee can hold the position pending elections. When President Doe died, we believed that conventionally everyone who worked in the Doe Government, including the chiefs, positions have gone with him and that new leafs should be turned.

Hon. Minister, when most of those who were elected during President Doe’s Administration returned home, they were busy trying to put together what was left for them and waiting to see if there will be new elections for the chiefs or a letter will come from the President of Liberia to re-confirm them as chiefs.

On his part, Mr. Zehyee Moses Dehyee did not see it that way. When he returned from exile, he named himself, General Town Chief, General Clan and now General Paramount Chief after the death of Isaac Diahn who was the Paramount Chief. Since President Doe’s death, we have not heard of any chieftaincy elections being held in Liberia.

With humility and supplication, we the citizens from the Niao Clan, Tchien District, Grand Gedeh County, are appealing to you to use your good offices to properly address this ugly situation now existing in Grand Gedeh County. The people in Niao Clan may seemingly be dying every week because recurring illnesses and other maladies are not being dealt with through modern medicine, but rather through witchcraft hunt in a witchcraft court

Very respectfully yours,

Signed:

Charles G. Breeze, Jr. SECRETARY, BOARD OF DIRECTORS

NIAO DEVELOPMENT ASSOC., USA
Approved by:

Harold G. Tarr
CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF DIRECTORS
NIAO DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION, U.S.A.
5151 Doral Avenue
Whitehall, OH 43213
Copies submitted to:
Hon. Abbular A. Johnson - Minister of Internal Affairs, Republic of Liberia.
The Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, Republic of Liberia.

The Return of Butt Naked

Liberian rebel leader, known as Gen. Butt Naked, confesses to killing thousands

2 hours, 12 minutes ago

By Jonathan Paye-Layleh, The Associated Press

MONROVIA, Liberia - One of Liberia's most notorious rebel commanders, known as Gen. Butt Naked for charging into battle wearing only boots, has confess to being responsible for 20,000 deaths.

Joshua Milton Blahyi, who now lives in Ghana, returned to Liberia last week to face his homeland's truth and reconciliation commission, this time wearing a suit and tie.

His nom de guerre is derived from his platoon's practice of charging naked into battle, a technique meant to terrify the enemy.

Other former warlords, though, have refused to ask forgiveness, dismissing a commission many in Liberia see as toothless. Blahyi is urging other former killers to come forward as the country founded by freed American slaves in 1847 struggles to recover from past horrors.

"I could be electrocuted. I could be hanged. I could be given any other punishment," the 37-year-old Blahyi said in a weekend interview following his truth commission appearance last week. "But I think forgiveness and reconciliation is the right way to go.

"I have been looking for an opportunity to tell the true story about my life - and every time I tell people my story, I feel relieved."

The civil war, which killed an estimated 250,000 people in a country with a population of just three million, was characterized by the eating of human hearts and soccer matches played with human skulls.

Drugged fighters waltzed into battle wearing women's wigs, flowing gowns and carrying dainty purses stolen from civilians.

Before he led his fighters into battle, wearing only a pair of lace-up boots, Blahyi said he made a human sacrifice to the devil.

The sacrifice was typically "the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart which was divided into pieces for us to eat," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.

He appeared before the commission Jan. 15, when he put a figure to his killings for the first time.

"More than 20,000 people fell victim (to me and my men). They were killed," said Blahyi, who dated the beginning of his involvement to 1982, when he was ordained as a ritual priest responsible for making human sacrifices before battle.

He said when he later led his fighters against the insurgency launched by Charles Taylor, he commanded them to embrace this tradition.

Some say Blahyi's confession is proof Liberia needs a war crimes court, not a commission.

The commission, modelled on the one in post-apartheid South Africa, has been taking testimony from victims and former rebels for two years, urging a full accounting of wartime atrocities. While the commission cannot charge killers with a crime, it can recommend charges be brought.

Meanwhile, several notorious killers have refashioned themselves as influential politicians in Liberia.

"If you have an individual admitting that he and his group killed over 20,000 people, certainly there should be a mechanism put in place for such people to face justice," said Mulbah Morlue, who heads the Forum for the Establishment of a War Crimes Court in Liberia.

Yet some praise Blahyi.

"You can't have true reconciliation without knowing the truth," said Johnny Lamine, a Monrovia resident. "Blahyi's story is alarming, but ... let's know who did what in Liberia during the war."

Others in a country where some feel everyone is tainted said they would rather not dig up the past. Because the violence was so widespread it's not uncommon to find Liberian families that have both victim and perpetrator under the same roof - a daughter who was raped and a son who took up a gun and went on to rape the daughters of other families.

"Liberians have tried to forget these stories," Mary Kollie said Sunday as she waited for a taxi home from church.

In the interview, Blahyi told The AP: "Some people see me and congratulate me. Others see me and say I should not be walking down the streets of Monrovia posing proud. But I continue to tell such people I am not proud, I am ashamed."

Liberia's violence began in 1979 when security forces killed dozens of people during massive riots.

The following year, President William Tolbert was ousted in a coup by Samuel Doe, an illiterate master sergeant, who ordered Tolbert's cabinet members tied to poles on a beach and executed.

Rebels led by Taylor invaded in 1989, plunging the country into another civil war. The war went into a momentary lull after 1997 when Taylor was elected president and again surged, ending only when Taylor was forced into exile in Nigeria in 2003. He is now facing charges of crimes against humanity at a tribunal in the Hague for atrocities committed by a rebel movement he allegedly supported in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Iran to Jesus

Islamic Jesus' hits Iranian movie screens

Sun Jan 13, 6:53 PM

TEHRAN (AFP) - A director who shares the ideas of Iran's hardline president has produced what he says is the first film giving an Islamic view of Jesus Christ, in a bid to show the "common ground" between Muslims and Christians.

Nader Talebzadeh sees his movie, "Jesus, the Spirit of God," as an Islamic answer to Western productions like Mel Gibson's 2004 blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ," which he praised as admirable but quite simply "wrong".

"Gibson's film is a very good film. I mean that it is a well-crafted movie but the story is wrong -- it was not like that," he said, referring to two key differences: Islam sees Jesus as a prophet, not the son of God, and does not believe he was crucified.

Talebzadeh said he even went to Gibson's mansion in Malibu, California, to show him his film. "But it was Sunday and the security at the gate received the film and the brochure and promised to deliver it," though the Iranian never heard back.

Even in Iran, "Jesus, The Spirit of God" had a low-key reception, playing to moderate audiences in five Tehran cinemas during the holy month of Ramadan, in October.

The film, funded by state broadcasting, faded off the billboards but is far from dead, about to be recycled in a major 20 episode spin-off to be broadcast over state-run national television this year.

Talebzadeh insists it aims to bridge differences between Christianity and Islam, despite the stark divergence from Christian doctrine about Christ's final hours on earth.

"It is fascinating for Christians to know that Islam gives such devotion to and has so much knowledge about Jesus," Talebzadeh told AFP.

"By making this film I wanted to make a bridge between Christianity and Islam, to open the door for dialogue since there is much common ground between Islam and Christianity," he said.

The director is also keen to emphasise the links between Jesus and one of the most important figures in Shiite Islam, the Imam Mahdi, said to have disappeared 12 centuries ago but whose "return" to earth has been a key tenet of the Ahmadinejad presidency.

Talebzadeh made his name making documentaries about Iran's 1980-1988 war against Iraq, an important genre in the country's post-revolutionary cinema.

But such weighty themes, and his latest film on Jesus, compete with domestic gangster thrillers and sugary boy-meets-girl love stories, the movies that continue to draw the biggest audiences in the Islamic Republic.

The bulk of "Jesus, the Spirit of God", which won an award at the 2007 Religion Today Film Festival in Italy, faithfully follows the traditional tale of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament Gospels, a narrative reproduced in the Koran and accepted by Muslims.

But in Talebzadeh's movie, God saves Jesus, depicted as a fair-complexioned man with long hair and a beard, from crucifixion and takes him straight to heaven.

"It is frankly said in the Koran that the person who was crucified was not Jesus" but Judas, one of the 12 Apostles and the one the Bible holds betrayed Jesus to the Romans, he said. In his film, it is Judas who is crucified.

Islam sees Jesus as one of five great prophets -- others being Noah, Moses and Abraham -- sent to earth to announce the coming of Mohammed, the final prophet who spread the religion of Islam. It respects Jesus' followers as "people of the book".

Iran has tens of thousands of its own Christians who are guaranteed religious freedoms under the constitution -- mainly Armenians, though their numbers have fallen sharply since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Every Christmas, Ahmadinejad and other officials lose no time in sending greetings to Christian leaders including the pope on what they describe as the "auspicious birthday of Jesus Christ, Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH)."

In this year's message, Ahmadinejad said that "peace, friendship and justice will be attained wherever the guidelines of Jesus Christ (PBUH) are realised in the world."

Shiite Muslims, the majority in Iran, believe Jesus will accompany the Imam Mahdi when he reappears in a future apocalypse to save the world.

And Talebzadeh said the TV version of his film will further explore the links between Jesus and the Mahdi -- whose return Ahmadinejad has said his government, which came to power in 2005, is working to hasten.

Shiites believe the Mahdi's reappearance will usher in a new era of peace and harmony.

"We Muslims pray for the 'Return' (of Imam Mahdi) and Jesus is part of the return and the end of time," Talebzadeh said.

"Should we, as artists, stand idle until that time? Don't we have to make an effort?"

Hildegard Knef - Seeräuber Jenny ( Pirate Jenny )

Hellmouth

Cultural Exchange

New study blames Columbus for syphilis spread

Tue Jan 15, 10:55 AM

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - New genetic evidence supports the theory that Christopher Columbus brought syphilis to Europe from the New World, U.S. researchers said Monday, reviving a centuries-old debate about the origins of the disease.

They said a genetic analysis of the syphilis family tree reveals that its closest relative was a South American cousin that causes yaws, an infection caused by a sub-species of the same bacteria.

"Some people think it is a really ancient disease that our earliest human ancestors would have had. Other people think it came from the New World," said Kristin Harper, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta.

"What we found is that syphilis or a progenitor came from the New World to the Old World and this happened pretty recently in human history," said Harper, whose study appears in journal Public Library of Science Neglected Tropical Diseases.

She said the study lends credence to the "Columbian theory," which links the first recorded European syphilis epidemic in 1495 to the return of Columbus and his crew.

"When you put together our genetic data with that epidemic in Naples in 1495, that is pretty strong support for the Columbian hypothesis," she said.

Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum, starts out as a sore, but progresses to a rash, fever, and eventually can cause blindness, paralysis and dementia.

Most recent evidence of its origins comes from skeletal remains found in both the New World and the Old World. Chronic syphilis can leave telltale lesions on bone. "It has a worm-eaten appearance," Harper said in a telephone interview.

SYPHILIS FAMILY TREE

Harper used an approach that examines the evolutionary relationships between organisms known as phylogenetics. She looked at 26 strains of Treponema, the family of bacteria that give rise to syphilis and related diseases like bejel and yaws, typically a childhood disease that is transmitted by skin-to-skin contact.

The study included two strains of yaws from remote areas of Guyana in South America that had never been sequenced before.

"We sequenced 21 different regions trying to find DNA changes between the strains," Harper said.

They concluded that while yaws is an ancient infection, venereal syphilis came about fairly recently. Harper suspects a nonvenereal subspecies of the tropical disease quickly evolved into venereal syphilis that could survive in the cooler, European climate.

But it is not clear how this took place. "All we can say is the ancestor of syphilis came from the New World, but what exactly it was like, we don't know," she said.

In a commentary published in the same journal, Connie Mulligan of the University of Florida and colleagues disagreed with Harper's analysis, suggesting her conclusions relied too heavily on genetic changes from the Guyana samples.

Mulligan suggested that better clues would come from DNA extracted from ancient bones or preserved tissues.

Harper concedes that more work needs to be done to explain the journey of syphilis to the New World. "This is a grainy photograph," she said.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

This Day in History

* 1377 - Pope Gregory XI moves the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon.
* 1524 - Beginning of Giovanni da Verrazzano's voyage to find a passage to China.
* 1562 - France recognizes the Huguenots under the Edict of Saint-Germain.
* 1595 - Henry IV of France declares war on Spain.
* 1605 - First publication of Don Quixote.
* 1648 - England's Long Parliament passes the Vote of No Addresses, breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and thereby setting the scene for the second phase of the English Civil War.
* 1819 - Simón Bolívar proclaims the Republic of Colombia.
* 1852 - The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Boer colonies of the Transvaal.
* 1885 - A British force defeats a large Dervish army at the Battle of Abu Klea in the Sudan.
* 1912 - Sir Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic) reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen.
* 1917 - The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
* 1929 - Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, first appears in the Thimble Theatre comic strip.
* 1941 - Kuomintang forces under orders from Chiang Kai-Shek open fire at communist forces, resuming the Chinese Civil War after WWII.
* 1945 - Soviet forces capture the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw.
* 1945 - The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in.
* 1946 - The UN Security Council holds its first session.
* 1949 - The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, first airs.
* 1961 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex".
* 1973 - Ferdinand Marcos becomes "President for Life" of the Philippines.
* 1985 - British Telecom announces the retirement of the United Kingdom's red telephone boxes.
* 1989 - Stockton massacre: Patrick Purdy opens fire with an assault rifle at the Cleveland Elementary School playground, killing five children and wounding 29 others and one teacher before taking his own life.
* 1991 - Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
* 1991 - Harald V becomes King of Norway on the death of his father, Olav V.
* 1998 - Paula Jones accuses President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment.
* 2002 - Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.
* 2007 - Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes to midnight in response to N. Korea nuclear testing

Trends in Cellular Lifeforms

Fri Jan 11, 12:49 PM

TOKYO (AFP) - Young Japanese people are evolving a new lifestyle for the 21st century based on the cellphones that few are now able to live without.

While about one-third of Japanese primary school students aged 7-12 years old use cellphones, by the time they get to high school that figure has shot up to 96 percent, according to a government survey released last month.

They are using their phones to read books, listen to music, chat with friends and surf the Internet -- an average of 124 minutes a day for high school girls and 92 minutes for boys.

While the wired world they now inhabit holds enormous advantages for learning and communicating, it also brings a downside, say experts who point to a rise in cyberbullying and a growing inability among teenagers to deal with other people face to face.

"Kids say what's most important to them, next to their own lives, is their cellphone," said Masashi Yasukawa, head of the private National Web Counselling Council.

"They are moving their thumbs while eating or watching television," he said.

The passion in 20-year-old Ayumi Chiba's voice backs up this assertion.

"My life is impossible without it," she says of her cellphone. "I used to pretend I was sick and leave school early when I forgot to take it with me."

Hideki Nakagawa, a sociology professor at Nihon University in Tokyo, said cellphones have become "an obsession" for youngsters.

"They feel insecure without cellphones, just the way sales people do without their name cards," he said.

As the multi-faceted cellphone takes centre stage in teen life, it plays a number of roles -- including a weapon that children can wield against each other with no thought for the consequences.

Yasukawa recalls the case of a 15-year-old girl who regularly received messages telling her: "Die," "You're a nuisance" and "You smell".

They turned out to have been sent by a friend in whom she had confided and who told her not to take the messages too seriously.

"The girl who was doing the bullying confessed it made her feel good to see the unease spreading on her friend's face," Yasukawa said.

"Some children send nasty messages to a 'friend' while in her company, pretending to be looking at her profile page on the cellphone.

"It's a very scary world," he said. "Parents don't know there's a very scary world behind cellphone screens."

As they reveal personal information about themselves, children can become prey for fraudsters and paedophiles, as only about one percent have blocks on potentially harmful material.

But on protected sites such as school bulletin boards that do block adults, bullies are free to anonymously post comments without any teacher oversight or intervention.

"Bully-to-bullied relations can be easily reversed with a targeted kid pointing the finger at somebody else for some trivial thing," Yasukawa said, adding that this potentially created "a survival game among children".

Japan's largest mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc. in December launched a line of cellphones for small children, with software ranging from picture books to school scheduling pads aimed at helping them to learn.

The cellphones will eventually become their main means of communication.

Education professor Tetsuro Saito said a survey of 1,600 middle school students aged around 14 found about 60 percent carried cellphones and nearly half used them to send 20 or more emails a day.

Most middle school cellphone users rarely used their phone to talk, the survey found. Saito, of Kawamura Gakuen Women's University near Tokyo, said children seemed to want the security of communicating with someone, without the bother of dealing with a real person.

"Communication ability is bound to decline as cellphones and other devices are now getting between people," he said.

Tomomi, 18, who would not give her full name, said: "I send some 20 emails a day. There are people I don't talk with -- even if I see them at school, I just exchange mail with them. I guess we're connected only by a machine."

Saito's survey found that students can also use their cellphones as an emotional crutch, and the more problems they have at home, the more dependent they seem to become on their phones.

More than 60 percent of students who said they do not enjoy being with their families send 20 or more emails a day, compared with 35 percent of those happy with their families.

And even if cellphones can bring solace, it can come at a terrible cost.

Kanae Yokoyama, 36, is facing trial for beating and spraining the neck of her 15-year-old daughter after catching her secretly using her cellphone in November.

The girl had been prohibited from using her phone as the bill had hit 120,000 yen (1,060 dollars) in October, mostly wracked up by downloading music and playing games, according to local police.

They said the mother had a history of abusing her daughter.

"Considering she was often absent from school, the mobile phone may have been her sole 'friend' to spend her days with," a police official said.

The Future of off-the-shelf Products

Hearts from cadavers beat anew: study

Sun Jan 13, 5:25 AM

PARIS (AFP) - In experiments that would make Dr. Frankenstein jealous, US scientists have coaxed recycled hearts taken from animal cadavers into beating in the laboratory after reseeding them with live cells, according to a study released Sunday.

If extended to humans, the procedure could provide an almost limitless supply of hearts, and possibly other organs, to millions of terminally ill people waiting helplessly for a new lease on life.

Approximately 50,000 patients in the United States alone die every year for lack of a donor heart, and some 22 million people worldwide are living with the threat of heart failure.

"The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells," said lead researcher Doris Taylor, director of the Center or Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota.

While there have been advances in generating living heart tissue in the lab, this is the first time an entire, three-dimension bio-artificial heart has been brought to life.

The core procedure making this possible is called decellularisation.

In this process, all the cells from an organ -- in this case the heart of a dead rat -- are stripped away using powerful detergents, leaving only a bleached-white scaffolding composed of proteins secreted by the cells.

In the experiments, this matrix was then injected with a mixture of cells taken from newborn rat hearts and placed in a sterile lab setting, where the scientists hoped it would grow.

After only four days, contractions started, and on the eighth day, the hearts were pumping, according to the study, published in the British journal Nature Medicine.

The researchers were stunned.

"When we saw the first contractions, we were speechless," said Harald Ott, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"We certainly were surprised that it worked so well and so quickly," Taylor told AFP. "There are so many places this could have gone wrong."

In humans the objective would be to inject stemcells drawn directly from the recipient of the donated organ, thus eliminating the danger that the new heart would be rejected by the immune system.

Recent breakthroughs in stemcell research from non-embryo sources mean that new tissues should be easy to generate, according to the authors.

Many patients who might one day benefit from a transplanted bioartificial organ are currently not even listed as potential recipients, said Ott.

"If organs derived from a patient's own cells would become available on a large scale -- maybe even as an off-the-shelf product -- millions of patients suffering from organ failure would benefit," he said in an e-mail.

In these "proof of concept" experiments, the bioartificial rat hearts grown in the lab pumped, after eight days, with a force equivalent to about two percent of an adult rodent heart.

Taylor and her team are now working on making the recycled organs more efficient, and have even transplanted some of these hearts into the abdomens of rats and connected them to the animals' aortas, a standard way of testing whether a donor organ can keep an animal alive.

Decellularisation could change the way scientists thinks about engineering organs, according to the study.

"It opens a door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas -- you name it and we hope we can make it," Taylor said.

Though not reported in this study, the Minnesota researchers have also successfully applied the technique to pig hearts, which are closer to human hearts in size and complexity.

RIP Henri Chopin (1922-2008)

Chopin was the author of what was likely the first avant garde album I'd ever purchased. Although I'd heard Cage and others on the radio, I had never heard anything quite like this. I found it purely by accident on vinyl at an antiquarian bookstore one autumn while I was a child. It probably had one of the most profound influences on the way I hear things and think about audio work.

To read more about him and to hear some of his work, please visit

here

Incest Fears in Parliamentary Politics

Twins separated at birth and adopted by separate parents later married each other without realising they were brother and sister.

The pair were granted an annulment after a High Court judge ruled the marriage had never validly existed.

The identities of the British pair and details of the relationship and marriage have been kept secret.

But it is known that they were separated soon after birth.

They were never told they were twins.

They did not discover they were blood relatives until after the wedding.

The case was uncovered by Lord Alton in a conversation with a High Court judge.

He used it to highlight perceived deficiencies in the Human Embryology and Tissues Bill, currently going through Parliament.

LONDON (AFP) - Twins who were separated at birth and adopted by different sets of parents later married each other without realising they were brother and sister, a peer has told the House of Lords.
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David Alton, an independent, pro-life member of the Lords, said the brother and sister were granted an annulment after a high court judge ruled that the marriage had never validly existed.

The Catholic politician -- who discovered the case after talking to a judge -- used it to highlight perceived deficiencies in the government's proposed Human Embryology and Tissues Bill, which is currently going through parliament.

The bill is designed to make it easier for lesbian and gay couples to have children through assisted reproduction, recognising same-sex partners as legal parents of babies conceived through donated sperm, eggs or embryos.

But it contains no provision to require the identity of the donor to be disclosed, potentially meaning a child could not be told they were conceived by assisted reproduction.

Alton raised the case of the married twins -- who were born after IVF treatment -- during a debate on December 10, details of which only appeared on Friday.

"There are implications for everybody involved, but the needs of the child will always be paramount, and it is right that we should therefore make the process as transparent as possible," Alton told the Lords.

IVF -- which increases the chances of multiple births -- meant such cases could become more common if the law does not require children to be told they were donor conceived and have access to their genetic history, he said.

"The right of children to know the identity of their biological parents is a human right," he added Friday.

"There will be more cases like this if children are not given access to the truth. The needs of the child must always be paramount."

The identities of the twins and details of their relationship and marriage have been kept secret, but it was known they were separated soon after birth and never told they were twins.

They only discovered they were blood relatives after the wedding.

The Evolution of America

By Karin Zeitvogel AFP - 2 hours 9 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - As adult obesity balloons in the United States, being overweight has become less of a health hazard and more of a lifestyle choice, the author of a new book argues.

"Obesity is a natural extension of an advancing economy. As you become a First World economy and you get all these labor-saving devices and low-cost, easily accessible foods, people are going to eat more and exercise less," health economist Eric Finkelstein told AFP.

In "The Fattening of America", published this month, Finkelstein says that adult obesity more than doubled in the United States between 1960 and 2004, rising from 13 percent to around 33 percent.

Globally, only Saudi Arabia fares worse than the United States in terms of the percentage of adults with a severe weight problem -- 35 percent of people in the oil-rich desert kingdom are classified as obese, the book says, citing data from the World Health Organization and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

With the rising tide of obesity come health problems and an increased burden on the healthcare system and industry.

"But the nasty side-effects of obesity aren't as nasty as they used to be," Finkelstein said.

"When you have a first-rate medical system that can cure the diseases that obesity promotes, you no longer need to worry so much about being obese," he told AFP.

"With our ever-advancing modern medicine there helping to save the day (at least for many people), are government and the media blowing the magnitude of the 'obesity crisis' out of proportion?" his book says.

A study in which Finkelstein and colleagues at the RTI International, an independent research institute in North Carolina that works on social and scientific problems, asked overweight, obese and normal weight people to predict their life expectancy came up with a total difference of four years.

Normal weight respondents predicted they would live to 78, the obese to 74, and the overweight 75.5.

Other studies that looked at death data back the conclusion that people who carry excess weight tend to die slightly earlier, the book says, and draws the conclusion that "many individuals are making a conscious decision to engage in a lifestyle that is obesity-promoting."

"People make choices, and some people will choose a weight that the public health community might be unhappy about. Why should we try to make them thinner?" Finkelstein said.

Linda Gotthelf, a doctor who heads research at Health Management Resources, a private, nationwide firm that specializes in weight loss and management, agreed that Americans now live longer but stressed that quality of life declines with age.

"People are living longer but with more chronic diseases," Gotthelf told AFP.

"That brings a diminished quality of life, especially for the obese who have more functional limitations as they age and tend to be on multiple medications."

Obesity is not a choice for Alley English, a 28-year-old mother from Missouri who has struggled with a weight problem all her life.

"If you knew that you could be what society considers normal, why would you not choose to do that?" English told AFP.

"As we get older, life does get more rushed and we do tend to make the easier choices sometimes," English, who currently weighs 392 pounds (178 kilograms), told AFP.

"But you can't say if you quit going to the drive-through, exercise more and eat more vegetables, you'll lose weight. There are so many more factors involved."

Gotthelf also disagreed that people choose to be obese.

"There are studies in which people have said they would rather lose a limb or be blind than obese. Being obese is not a desire," she said.

"For many, this is a problem they have struggled with for many years... it gets discouraging after a while," she said.

"I would not doubt that if you asked obese people if they could push a button and not be obese, close to 100 percent would say they would push the button."

Finkelstein says he wrote "The Fattening of America" to "encourage discussion of what I understand is probably an uncomfortable position for a lot of people."

Even if private industry and government take steps to protect society against the costs of obesity, many Americans "will likely continue to choose a diet and exercise regimen that leads to excess weight," because losing weight requires too many lifestyle sacrifices, his book warns.

Meanwhile, frustrated by years of unsuccessful dieting and weight loss programs, English has opted to join a growing number of Americans who have gastric bypass surgery -- hailed in Finkelstein's book as "the best-known treatment for severe obesity."

"I have a higher risk of developing diabetes or hypertension if I don't have the surgery," English said.

"I don't care if I end up with a body like whoever-in-the-media thinks I should look like; I just want to be healthy and able to participate in my daughter's life," she said.

I Was a Rice Bag Baby

Newborns visit relatives as cuddly rice bags

Tue Jan 8, 10:35 AM

TOKYO (Reuters) - New-born babies in Japan who can't make it around to visit all their relatives can now send them proxies instead - cuddly bags of rice.

A small rice shop in Fukuoka, southern Japan, has been swamped with orders for "Dakigokochi" rice-filled bags shaped like a bundled baby and printed with the new-born's face and name.

Each rice bag is tailor-made to weigh as much as the new-born and shaped so the rice fills the bag up. Holding the round-edged bag would feel like holding a real baby.

"Other rice shops sell bags printed with baby photos, but they use regular bags. People say they aren't good for holding," said Naruo Ono, owner of the rice shop, Yoshimiya.

"Rice for small babies would be stuck at the bottom of the bag, and the baby's photo would be scrunched at the top."

It is customary in Japan to give people gifts or money on occasions such as births, and the recipient then responds with other gifts, often worth half the amount they received.

The rice bags have made perfect "half-return" gifts, Ono said, although relatives face a dilemma once they are done with the cuddling.

"People say they have a hard time opening them up and eating the rice," Ono said.

(Reporting by Chisa Fujioka)

Never mind the Tamagotchi electronic baby toy. With the Dakigokochi, you can actually cuddle your gift. A Dakigokochi is a baby-shaped bag filled with rice. It weighs exactly as much as the newborn infant whose photo is printed on the bag. New parents and proud grandparents who shop at the Yoshimiya rice shop in a residential area of Kita-Kyushu's Yahata-Nishi Ward are ordering the cuddly bags as gifts to celebrate recent births. Orders for the unusual product are coming in from all over via the shop's Web site, owner Naruo Ono, 33, said. Yoshimiya has sold more than 1,500 bags since June. It is personalized with a photograph of the new baby printed on the rice bag's surface. The newborn's name and birth weight are also printed on the bag, along with a short message from the proud parents. '(The Dakigokochi) is a great way to let far-away relatives experience holding the new baby. I hope people will use this idea to spread their joyous news,' he said. Each Dakigokochi is about 30 centimeters long and rounded at the top. Holding it feels just like holding a swaddled baby. The vinyl rice bag has a traditional washi paper covering. The gift comes wrapped in a furoshiki cloth tied with a fancy gift knot. The idea came to Ono when he and his bride Yukiko, 26, were planning their October 2006 wedding. Naturally, they wanted to hand out gifts with rice as the theme. Each of the couple's wedding guests went home with a packet of rice, adorned with a picture of the blissful bride and groom. The unusual party favor was well received. The young entrepreneurs thought it might also work as a baby announcement gift. Ono printed up a prototype Dakigokochi bag of rice and displayed it in the shop. Their first customer was a person who happened to stop by the shop. These days, however, most orders come in through the Internet. The Onos receive a lot of happy e-mail responses from satisfied customers. One wrote: 'It feels like I am really holding a baby!' Another said, 'The newborn's big brother and sister like to use the (Dakigokochi) package when they play house.' Ono said: 'When I am preparing the bags, I am always hoping that everyone will be proud of their baby and go around showing off their little bundle of joy.' The Dakigokochi success came as a big surprise. It has changed Ono's routine dramatically. While he used to spend most days taking rice orders and making deliveries in the neighborhood, now, more often than not, Ono finds himself in front of his computer, fiddling with images on the screen. In August, the Onos welcomed their first son, Sota, now four months old. 'We have been so busy, to tell the truth, I haven't got around to sending off my own Dakigokochi gifts yet,' Ono said with a sheepish grin. The package can be filled with Koshihikari rice grown in either Niigata Prefecture (4,200 yen) or Yamaguchi Prefecture (3,500 yen). The flat rates apply no matter how much the newborn weighed at birth. Call 093-611-0894 or visit <>. The company also sells rice gift bags for other occasions. -END-(IHT/Asahi: January 8,2008)

Nouveau Riche

Japan's new rich party like it's 1989

2 hours, 15 minutes ago

By Sophie Hardach

TOKYO (Reuters) - They customize the headrests of their Rolls-Royces with "Harry Potter writing," sip martinis poured over diamonds and buy $130,000 watches on a whim.

Meet Japan's big spenders.

On a Wednesday night, carefully coiffed women in fur coats slide into a rooftop bar in Ginza, Tokyo's most exclusive shopping district. Ten floors below, the streets resound with the angry growl of a Ferrari stuck in a traffic jam.

In this setting reminiscent of the booming 1980s, it seems hard to believe that Japan is suffering from weak consumer spending.

Despite a sluggish economy, tepid retail sales and a weak yen, demand for super-luxury goods and services is up, thanks to a small, growing class of new rich -- the winners of Japan's economic reforms.

In a society that used to value equality and modesty, these entrepreneurs and executives in sectors such as information technology and finance like to flaunt their wealth.

"People have a view of the Japanese as quite conformist," said Matthew Bennett, general manager of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in Japan. "But the number of people asking us to do something we've never seen before is the highest in the world."

Japanese clients frequently arrive with bits of cloth or magazine photos, asking for a custom-made Rolls-Royce, he said. One ordered a two-tone car in light grey and tomato red, a previously unseen color combination that added more than $20,000 to the retail price of about $390,000. Another had his Rolls-Royce fitted with a refrigerator and television, bringing the price up to about $550,000. Yet another asked for his initials to be put on the headrests in Gothic script -- or, as he put it, "Harry Potter writing" -- an extra $5,000.

Rolls-Royce's bespoke services for Russian and Eastern European clients centre around armored cars. Chinese color requests all tend to be for auspicious red and gold. But in Japan, Bennett said, the wealthy stand out with personal and often quirky ideas.

"It's a very rich market for us," he concluded.

It is also a rich market for fast cars. Maserati sales were up 21 percent in January to November 2007 compared with the previous year. Ferrari sales grew 11 percent in that period, Porsche 15 percent. Meanwhile, cars for the once so mighty middle class are selling badly. Toyota sales fell 17 percent in the same period, Volkswagen sales 6 percent and Mercedes sales 7 percent.

FASHION RIFT

In the fashion world, extremely expensive brands such as Bottega Veneta, whose cheapest handbag sells for $1,500 on Tokyo's glitzy Omotesando shopping mile, are doing better than Gucci or Louis Vuitton, the traditional favorites of the Japanese luxury shopper, whose handbag prices start at $600 to

$900.

"There's a sort of polarization," notes Claudia D'Arpizio, a partner at consultancy Bain & Co, in a phone conversation from Italy, where she is based. She points out that Bottega Veneta has been shifting its collection in Japan towards more expensive items due to high-end demand. Louis Vuitton, on the other hand, launched lower-priced models in Japan last year to fish around for new customers.

The spending habits reflect a deepening economic divide.

Japan, long known for its safe and stable corporate culture, introduced performance-based wages and stock options and made it easier to hire and fire temporary workers to boost competitiveness after the 1990s economic slump. This has produced a new business elite as well as a growing number of poor and unskilled temporary workers.

For luxury goods makers, the new rich are an appetizing prospect. The number of people in Japan holding more than $1 million in financial assets grew 5.1 percent in 2006 to some 1.5 million, about three times as many as in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong put together, according to the Capgemini/Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report.

In 2007, Japan saw an avalanche of products for the very wealthy: a volcanic body scrub and massage at the new Armani tower in Ginza for up to $600; a $130,000-a-night Christmas suite with a bejeweled tree in the Mandarin Oriental hotel; a $47 set of tissues in a Swarovski crystal-studded box. The Ritz-Carlton in Tokyo launched a $15,000 martini with a diamond.

"That's ridiculous," said a 45-year-old business owner and one of Japan's newly wealthy.

"Those people hanging around Ginza, they are just showing off," he said, relaxing in his sleek Tokyo office in jeans and a white shirt. "If someone has it, other people want it. That's Japanese. The group mentality."

The business owner was willing to talk about his spending habits only on condition of anonymity, for fear of drawing unwanted attention, and declined to say how much he was worth.

He is onto his fourth Jaguar and just bought a $130,000 Francois-Paul Journe to add to his growing watch collection. He once bid in an auction for woodblock prints by Hiroshige, a 19th century Japanese printmaker, during a flight from Frankfurt to Cairo. The line kept breaking up, but he still came away with 15 prints.

PRESTIGE

Finding out what exactly such top spenders want and marketing it effectively can be tricky.

Versace has tried to position itself globally as a super-exclusive brand by selling custom services such as interiors for private jets. But in Japan it lacks prestige, possibly because it does not have a flagship store in the Ginza district. The Italian fashion house's financial troubles have prevented it from investing in marketing and retail in a city that is suddenly seeing an influx of money from European brands.

Over the past year or so, Armani, Gucci, and Bulgari have all opened retail towers in Ginza, which feels like a live, super-scale commercial for luxury goods. Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, and many others are already there, with adverts and brand names splashed across 10 storeys. Facades sparkle with projections of snowflakes or bamboo, vying for the attention of Japanese shoppers. The weak yen also means it is a good time for upmarket brands -- flush with cash from a global luxury boom -- to secure a place there.

Bulgari, the Italian jeweler, invested heavily in Japan last year, opening a flagship store in Omotesando as well as Ginza.

Francesco Trapani, Bulgari's chief executive, said in a telephone interview from Italy that Japanese demand for jewelry in the higher price segments -- which he defined as 25,000 euros to 70,000 euros, or $37,000 to $100,000 -- has been particularly strong.

"In Japan, there's a great opportunity for more expensive, more sophisticated products, be it watches, jewelry, or accessories," Trapani said.

The new Bulgari restaurant on top of the flagship store in Ginza is packed on a weekday. "Luxury clients want to be entertained," Trapani added. "A retail space shouldn't just be a sales point, it has to be fun and exciting and underline the prestige of the brand they're about to buy."

The Japanese businessman with a weakness for watches and woodblock prints is already tiring of the shopping bonanza.

He finds there are fewer and fewer things he wants. He likes to visit museums rather than own artwork, except for a few lithographs by Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.

"The process of getting it, or just before getting it, is interesting. Keeping it is not so interesting," he concludes.

Lately, he has developed a liking for tea ceremony. Three of his wealthy friends now regularly practice the ancient, complex ritual. "Before, Japanese used to enjoy this kind of luxury, he says of the ceremony. "It's a kind of invisible beauty."

(Reporting by Sophie Hardach; Editing by Eddie Evans)

New Chapter in the War on Monkeys

Indian state wants jobless youths to sterilise monkeys

Fri Jan 4, 2:30 AM

NEW DELHI (AFP) - A northern Indian state says it will train unemployed youths to sterilise monkeys in a drive to check the population of simians blamed for large-scale crop destruction.

The youth will be trained to capture and sterilise thousands of monkeys in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, its government said in a statement.

The sterilisation drive would take place on a "war footing" to provide relief to farmers, some of whom have abandoned their land after the animals destroyed crops, the government said.

Last year, thousands of farmers gathered outside the state legislature demanding action.

There are more than 300,000 monkeys in the state, according to government figures. Rampaging monkeys have sparked concern in other Indian states too.

In October, the deputy mayor of Indian capital New Delhi died after falling from a balcony as he tried to chase monkeys away.

Wildlife experts say monkeys come into conflict with humans when their natural habitat in forests is destroyed.

India's Hindus revere the animals as an incarnation of monkey god Hanuman

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The Family Complex and the Pathology of Democracy

Online support grows for 'hot' Bhutto son

34 minutes ago

LONDON (AFP) - Bilawal Bhutto, thrust into the political spotlight by the assassination of his mother in Pakistan, can count on support from at least one source -- female Facebook fans who describe him as "hot".

"Oh My God he's cute," said one contributor to "Let's not assassinate Bilawal Bhutto because he's hot, ok?," a new group on the social networking site after the 19-year-old was named last week to succeed his mother as leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

"Oh God, I totally agree. He's so sexy," added another member of the group, which so far had 48 members.

The Oxford undergraduate, who attended his mother Benazir Bhutto's funeral last Friday, reveals a few things about himself on his own Facebook site, describing his political views as "liberal".

"What's Islamic extremism? It's strict adherence to a particular interpretation of seventh century Islamic law as practiced by the prophet Mohammed, and when I say 'strict adherence', I'm not kidding around.

"Men are forced to pray, wear their beards a certain length. Among my favorites is there's only one acceptable cheer at a football match: Allah-hu-Akbar. God is great.

"If your guys are getting creamed, then you're on your own," he wrote on his Facebook site, which says he has 315 friends.

Bilawal, who is due to return to his studies in Oxford this month, lists his hobbies as cricket, swimming, squash and shooting, his favourite TV shows include "The Simpsons" and top filmmakers Michael Moore and Quentin Tarantino.

Other details are revealed by online friends: the Guardian daily printed a picture of him in fancy dress as the devil at a Halloween Party with red horns and a trident.

"We're ready to bring hell on earth ... mwaaahahahahahah," he reportedly added in a comment appended to the photo, posted by a friend.

Other Facebook groups focused on the teenager, whose nomination raised some eyebrows among critics of the dynastic system, include "Support Bilawal Bhutto Zardari," and another named: "Bilawal Bhutto Zardari? Where'd he come from?"