Jeremy Lin makes privacy plea for Taiwan relatives
National Basketball Association star Jeremy Lin made a public plea for reporters in Taiwan to respect the privacy of his family members there.
Lin’s fairy-tale run, and the media storm that has accompanied it, has had an affect on those in his ancestral homelands.
The US-born Lin is the son of Taiwanese immigrants and his maternal grandmother is from mainland China.
“One special request I have is for the media in Taiwan to kind of give them their space because they can’t go to work without being bombarded and people following them,” said Lin, following the Knicks 104-97 win over defending NBA champion Dallas on Sunday.
“I just want people to respect the privacy of my relatives in Taiwan. Hopefully this will get back to everybody because they need to live their lives.”
Lin also talked about an apology he received from US broadcasting giant ESPN which posted an anti-Asian slur in a headline on its mobile website following Friday’s Knicks game.
“ESPN has apologized,” Lin said. “I don’t think it was on purpose. From my end, I don’t care anymore. You have to learn to forgive. I don’t even think that was intentional. Hopefully not.”
Debt-laden Kingfisher cancelled 16 flights on Monday from Mumbai and several more from New Delhi and elsewhere, on top of scrapping more than 30 flights the previous day.
The airline said it was forced to curtail its services after tax authorities froze its bank accounts reportedly due to its inability to clear its unpaid service taxes.
“This has severely affected our ability to make operational payments, leading to the current curtailment,” Kingfisher said in a statement on Monday.
“We are appealing to them to see reason that inconvenience to the travelling public is not in anybody’s interest and are in talks to get (bank accounts) unfrozen.”
Kingfisher added that its chief executive Sanjay Aggarwal had been summoned for a meeting with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Tuesday.
“We will appear before the DGCA tomorrow and submit all details they want and also a plan to restore the full schedule,” the airline’s statement said.
Kingfisher, which announced a third quarter loss of $88 million last week, has been beset with difficulties caused by soaring fuel costs and high local sales taxes, as well as a domestic price war.
At the weekend, the airline blamed some of the disruptions — the second batch since November — on bird strikes. It said a full daily schedule of 240 flights should return to operation over this week.
Flight cancellations have hit passenger confidence hard and left stranded travellers fuming.
“At the airport I was told my flight is delayed and there is no clue when it will fly,” private bank executive Amit Vij told AFP at Mumbai airport as he tried to return to the northern city Chandigarh.
“They did not call, SMS or email me in advance. Even the helplines are not responding.”
But the airline says it is re-booking passengers on rival carriers and also offering full refunds.
The Bangalore-based Kingfisher, owned by brewing magnate Vijay Mallya, has never posted a net profit since it started operating in 2005.
It has seen its passenger market share slump to 12 percent in recent months, with its ranking on the list of India’s largest airlines falling from second to fifth.
India’s civil aviation minister Ajit Singh reiterated on Monday that private firms such as Kingfisher could not expect any aid package.
“The government is not going to ask banks to bail out any private airline, or any private industry for that matter,” Singh told the NDTV news channel.
India’s airline industry — once a symbol of the country’s economic progress — is now plagued by high fuel prices, fierce competition, price wars and inadequate airport infrastructure, with Kingfisher one of the worst-hit firms.
The company’s shares closed Friday at 26.6 rupees, down 39 percent from a year earlier. Markets were closed Monday due to a holiday.
A quarter of Kingfisher is owned by local banks and some have refused to lend the company more cash unless fresh capital is raised.
Questions about the firm’s financial viability grew after it axed its low-cost Kingfisher Red service to concentrate on its full-fare business in September.
“Kingfisher will soon have to consider limiting operations to bleed less, besides selling and leasing back some aircraft to lower debt,” said a Mumbai-based aviation analyst on condition of anonymity.
Kingfisher has a 64 aircraft fleet, flying to 46 destinations in India and eight overseas.
Indonesian bomb suspect never met bin Laden: lawyer
Suspected Indonesian bombmaker Umar Patek’s stay in the same Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was later killed in a US raid was a coincidence and the pair never met, according to his lawyer.
Patek, 45, faces six counts of murder, bomb-making and illegal firearms possession over the 2002 Bali nightclub attacks, and prosecutors say they will push for the death penalty.
In his trial at the West Jakarta court on Monday, defence lawyers objected to the murder charges, saying Patek was not involved in planning the bombing that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
Patek, once the most wanted terror suspect in Indonesia, had a $1 million bounty on his head under the US rewards for justice programme.
He was extradited to Indonesia after being arrested in January 2011 in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where US commandos later killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
Defence lawyer Asludin Hatjani denied that Patek had gone to Pakistan to meet with the Al-Qaeda boss.
“He went to Pakistan as part of his plans to migrate to Afghanistan. He never met Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and he had no plans to meet him. In fact, he had no idea Osama was in Abbottabad,” Hatjani said.
He denied Patek was linked to Al-Qaeda. “Even the police statements make no mention of his links to Al-Qaeda,” he said.
Patek was a suspected key member of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a Southeast Asian terror network with suspected links to Al-Qaeda.
Hatjani added that Patek’s role in the Bali bombings was smaller than the prosecution was trying to portray.
“His role in the Bali bombing was that he… participated in assembling the bombs,” he told reporters after Monday’s session.
“The premeditated murder charge is not appropriate.”
He said defence lawyers had also denied that Patek tested three M16 assault rifles to help prepare a terrorist training camp in Aceh province on Sumatra island, where police say militants were planning gun attacks on prominent Indonesian figures.
“He never participated in the testing of firearms. He was in the area but to attend a wedding. He never saw any firearms or took part in the militant training… We call that this charge be legally invalid.”
“The prosecution will prove in future trials and bring forward witnesses to prove that our premeditated murder charge has basis,” prosecutor Bambang Suharyadi told AFP.
According to the indictment Patek was involved in assembling the bombs for the Bali attacks and strikes on churches in Jakarta on Christmas Eve of 2000.
Patek allegedly used simple household tools including a rice ladle to assemble the Bali bombs, which were placed in ordinary filing cabinets, according to Suharyadi and details contained in the indictment.
Patek is also wanted in the Philippines, where he allegedly plotted attacks with militants after escaping the Indonesian dragnet.
He is believed to be indirectly associated with Indonesian terror suspect Hambali, who is in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, and radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who was jailed last June for funding terrorism.
Patek’s trial, which began last Monday, is expected to last at least four months.
North Korea announced its ruling party will hold a rare special conference in April to “glorify” late leader Kim Jong-Il and rally around his young son and successor Kim Jong-Un.
The meeting was expected formally to appoint Jong-Un as Workers’ Party chief, further strengthening his grip on power.
The conference will “glorify the sacred revolutionary life and feats of Kim Jong-Il for all ages and accomplish the Juche cause, the Songun revolutionary cause, rallied close around Kim Jong-Un”, the official news agency said on Monday.
Juche, or self-reliance, is the nation’s official ideology. The Songun, or military-first policy, prioritises troops’ welfare over civilians.
The meeting will be held in mid-April, close to the 100th anniversary of the birth of late founding president Kim Il-Sung — the original member of the dynasty which has ruled since 1948.
North Korea has selected the anniversary as the start of a new era when the impoverished nation becomes a “powerful and prosperous” state.
The North last held a party conference in September 2010, its biggest political meeting for 30 years.
That meeting appointed Jong-Un as vice-chairman of the party’s central military commission in preparation for the eventual handover of power.
The transition came sooner than expected when Kim Jong-Il died of a heart attack on December 17 at age 69.
His son has been proclaimed the new ruler but has formally been appointed to only one of the late Kim’s posts, military commander-in-chief.
The April meeting is very likely to appoint Jong-Un to his father’s old post of party general secretary and also as chief of its central military commission, said Paik Hak-Soon of South Korea’s Sejong Institute think-tank.
The former leader also headed the all-powerful National Defence Commission (NDC), a non-party body.
Paik said it was unclear whether Jong-Un would leave the NDC post vacant forever in memory of Kim Jong-Il, in the same way Jong-Il reserved the position of state president for his own late father.
“But that’s not important,” he told AFP. “What’s important is that Jong-Un will be firmly in power with all the necessary top titles under his belt, probably by the end of April.”
The analyst said the conference would also address economic policies and perhaps policy towards the United States and South Korea.
“But detailed South Korea policies may come out after the North sees the result of the South’s general election in April,” Paik said.
South Korea’s left-leaning opposition party, which has traditionally supported aid and engagement with the North, currently leads the conservative ruling party in opinion polls.
on a key write-down of Greece’s debt in a last-minute meeting with banks.
After months of acrimonious debate, all sides expressed confidence that an agreement would be found to greenlight a 230-billion-euro ($300 billion) financial lifeline, in exchange for strict surveillance of the Athens government over coming years.
Greece, Germany, the IMF and the head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, each said a deal was do-able during closed-door talks centred on avoiding an increased outlay from the public purse.
However, a 5.5-billion-euro gap remained to be filled if Germany and the Netherlands especially are to get the agreement past their national parliaments.
“Papademos has now gone in” to talks with creditor banks, one eurozone governmental source told AFP at around 8:30 pm (1930 GMT).
How much he was seeking by way of an extra contribution to a write-down of privately-held Greek sovereign bonds “depends on the impact of other elements” in the plan, said another.
Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter had already suggested on arrival that the private sector be asked to “help a bit more.”
European Union and International Monetary Fund partners have set a target for Greek debt sustainability of 120 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020, down from around 160 percent at present.
The 5.5-billion-euro gap comes about because the latest analysis suggests that even with a bailout, Greek total debt would only fall to 129 percent of GDP.
Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on arrival that he was “optimistic” of a deal, signalling “a long period of uncertainty coming to a close today — a period that benefited neither the Greek economy, nor the euro area overall.”
A “confident” Wolfgang Schaeuble of Germany seemed to justify the sense an agreement was in the making, while IMF chief Christine Lagarde also praised Athens’ “great efforts” to overhaul its economy.
But Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees De Jager demanded the EU and the IMF take “permanent” control of decision-making over revenues and public expenditure in Greece.
De Jager said partners committed to providing Greece with money for years to come need “some kind of permanent presence” dictating policy on the ground, saying lenders should be “the boss.”
The Greek rescue is structured as follows: a writedown of privately-held government debt worth 100 billion euros; a series of sweeteners for Greek banks including guarantees in case private creditors do not take up the bond-swap offer to be launched on Wednesday in sufficient numbers; and loans eventually adding up to another 130 billion euros.
Athens faces debt repayments of about 14.5 billion euros on March 20, otherwise it could be classed as bankrupt.
Full delivery of the rest of the package, as well as IMF assistance, will be contingent on Greece enacting deeply unpopular spending cuts and reforms demanded by its partners.
Belgian Finance Minister Steven Vanackere and others warned that Greece must deliver, “not only today, but in the weeks, months and years to come.”
Eurozone hardliners’ patience with Greece almost snapped over recent weeks with growing suggestions Athens could be cut adrift and that the eurozone would suffer less damage from such an approach than 18 months ago.
Many euro partners see Greece as the victim of decades of chronic financial mismanagement by dynastic political forces — what Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti last week called a “perfect catalogue” of errors.
Ahead of a general election in April, the new bailout has been likened to the aid equivalent of a hospital drip.
Surveillance of Greece’s day-to-day economic management is critical after the failure of an initial 110-billion-euro EU-IMF rescue approved nearly two years ago.
A small army of EU officials is building up in Athens to make sure Greece delivers on pledges including a 22 percent reduction in the country’s minimum wage and a 12-percent cut to pensions of more than 1,300 euros a month.
On top of 3.2 billion euros in the latest spending cuts, Greece has agreed in principle to open a blocked, or “escrow” account to ensure that aid for repayments to government creditors is set aside and not used for other purposes.
After repeated violent protests, finally resolving the Greek problem would allow eurozone leaders to focus on building a financial firewall for the currency bloc as a whole at a March 1 and 2 summit.
Here, immigrants push supermarket carts full of metal scraps, while in garages only old cars are being repaired.
In this little red house, alongside the railway line, the homeless come to find warmth and shelter, clothing, food or at least psychological support.
Klimaka, a non-governmental group formed in 2000 and backed financially by the health, foreign affairs and labour ministries, aims to help those who have lost the most.
In Athens, the profile of a homeless person has changed with the economic crisis, said Effie Stamatogiannopoulou of Klimaka.
“Before, the categories of people on the streets were immigrants, alcoholics and drug addicts,” said Stamatogiannopoulou, a professional nurse.
In the past two years however “our data show a 25 percent increase of homeless people who have no such problems but are simply unemployed,” she added.
The latest figures confirm this trend: 20 percent of the active population is unemployed and almost half of those — 48 percent — are younger than 25.
Among some 400 people who come to the Klimaka centre every week is 33-year old Lorenzo Braimi, originally from neighbouring Albania.
Living in Athens for 18 years, Braimi lost his job as an electrician six months ago. Now, with a pen in his hand, he carefully checks newspaper ads.
“I couldn’t pay my rent anymore and I ended up in the street. For several days I stayed with friends who eventually advised me to come to this association,” Klimaka, he said.
For ten days now, he has come here every morning to check the papers and use the centre’s phone to reply to the ads for jobs.
“I am not afraid of any work,” he insisted, even asking visiting AFP reporters whether there is a “little job for me in your company?”
Petros, 56, shuns the media. A former seaman, he has been unemployed for the past three years, blaming his predicament on growing competition from Turkish and Filipino sailors.
With a salary of around 2,000 euros ($2,600) per month for a working week of around 50 hours, Petros could not compete with manpower paid only 600 euros per month.
Living on the streets for two years now, he constantly looks for a bed to spend the night. He has two brothers, but they “are both unemployed.”
“In Greece, the problem of the homeless is recent,” said Christos Papatheodorou, social politics professor at the Democritus University of Thrace.
The family, traditionally a bastion of solidarity in Greece, has so far contained the problem during the crisis, “but the situation risks to explode,” warned Stamatogiannopoulou.
According to the statistics bureau ELSTAT, more than three million of Greece’s population of 11 million — or 27.7 percent — were close to poverty or social exclusion in 2010, at the very start of the crisis.
Things have become much worse since.
Papatheodorou noted that EU statistics agency Eurostat and national statistics offices base their figures on a typical household, that is, on those having a roof above their heads.”
“Therefore, the increase of extreme poverty among homeless people does not appear in the statistics,” he said.
Klimaka estimates that 20,000 people live in the streets of Athens nowadays.
George Kaminis, the capital’s mayor, told Ethnos daily last December that the number of homeless has increased by 20 percent compared to the previous year.
Papatheodorou worries about the future.
“Worsening pay, all these cuts, notably in public services and social security system, risk increasing poverty even more,” he warned.
Ireland was the only European Union stop on the Chinese leader-in-waiting’s international tour, and ministers in Dublin said it showed that the republic was the place to invest in the 27-member bloc.
Ireland stressed its low 12.5 percent corporation tax rate as well as its solid ties with the United States during Xi’s visit, which ended with an Ireland-China trade and investment forum attended by 350 companies.
Prime Minister Enda Kenny said closer links would benefit both Ireland and China.
“Sometimes people question the prospect of a close partnership between a small island off the northwest coast of Europe and the world’s largest nation on the opposite side of the globe,” Kenny told the forum.
“But… it is a matter of knowing your strengths, and how you exercise them. That is why the prospect of greater relations between Ireland and China, in my opinion, makes perfect sense for both of our nations.”
Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said Xi had referred several times to his intention to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Ireland.
“They have identified Ireland as the country with whom they want to first of all do business with,” Gilmore told RTE state radio.
Gilmore told the Financial Times that he wanted China to view Ireland “like a bridge or gateway, where there is potential not just for investment by Chinese companies or investors directly but also opportunities to build partnerships with investors in the US.”
The Irish economy is slowly recovering after the eurozone member was forced to seek an 85-billion-euro ($112 billion) EU-International Monetary Fund rescue package in November 2010 after massive debt and deficit problems left the economy on the verge of collapse.
Xi arrived in Ireland on Saturday after a visit to the United States and left for Turkey after the trade forum.
Trade between China and Ireland is worth more than five billion euros ($6.6 billion) and more than 130 Irish companies now have offices in China, employing some 10,000 Chinese workers.
Four agreements were signed during the visit, aimed at facilitating closer links on trade, investment and education.
The vice president also enjoyed a taste of Emerald Isle culture, sipping an Irish coffee and trying out his skills at hurling and gaelic football at Dublin’s Croke Park stadium, the cathedral of Irish sports.
He attended a performance of Riverdance, the international musical hit show based on Irish step-dancing.
And in western County Clare, he visited the famously beautiful Cliffs of Moher and a dairy farm where a new-born Friesian heifer calf was named after him.
Earlier Monday, Xi was given a red carpet welcome by President Michael D. Higgins at his official residence in Dublin, before visiting parliament.
“China and Europe are at different stages of development and have different cultures, traditions and social systems,” Xi said at an official dinner Sunday at Dublin Castle.
“But as long as we treat each other as equals and follow the spirit of mutual understanding and inclusiveness, these differences are not unbridgeable.
“The fact that China and Ireland have become good friends and good partners stands out as a vivid example of this.”
Xi’s visit will be followed by closer diplomatic links, with four Irish government members led by Kenny due to visit to China next month.
The planes are “valued at nearly $1.5 billion at list prices,” the US manufacturer said in a statement.
Karachi-based PIA “has been renewing its long-haul fleet to accommodate increased demand for air travel as well as to introduce new routes,” Boeing said.
PIA managing director Nadeem Yousufzai lauded the 777-300ER’s “excellent operating economics, long range capability and reliability.”
Boeing said it had logged 200 net orders for 777s in 2011, by far the best year for the family of aircraft, in service since 1995.
Former captain Ricky Ponting’s one-day international cricket career appeared over after he was dropped from Australia’s team for the tri one-day series against India and Sri Lanka.
Chief selector John Inverarity on Monday said Ponting, the second all-time leading runscorer in ODIs, was axed because of his poor batting form.
Ponting, 37, said earlier that he wanted to battle through his current slump after scoring just 18 runs in five knocks in the tri-series for a meagre average of 3.60.
But Inverarity, while praising Ponting’s contribution over a glittering 17-year ODI career, seemed to shut the door on any future for the veteran player in Australia’s one-day side.
“The team will not seem the same without him, but moving on from the omission of players who have been outstanding over a long period of time is the nature of elite sport,” he said.
The selectors dumped Ponting as they announced a 13-man squad with all-rounder Shane Watson returning for Australia’s next two tri-series ODIs, against Sri Lanka in Hobart on Friday and India in Sydney next Sunday.
Questions had mounted over Ponting’s future in Australia’s ODI team following his lean run in the tri-series, where he has failed to reach double figures in any of his innings.
His sacking came a day after he led Australia to a crushing 110-run win over India in Brisbane as stand-in for injured regular skipper Michael Clarke.
Ponting said after Sunday’s victory that he had no intention of seeking a break to freshen up after his poor tri-series run.
“It’s fair to say I’ve struggled in the first five games,” Ponting told reporters.
“(But) at the end of the day I’m available for selection for Hobart’s game (against Sri Lanka on Friday).
“I’m not going to put my hand up and say I want a break, because when you are going through a lean trot like I’ve had the last couple of games, you want to turn that around.”
Clarke will return from a strained hamstring to again take over the Australia captaincy in the tri-series, with Watson as his deputy.
Ponting ranks second only to India’s Sachin Tendulkar with most ODI runs (13,704) from 375 matches, while he has also played 162 Tests. But selectors signalled that time was up after his dismal run of late.
“Ricky Ponting has been dropped from the squad due to his lack of form in the five tri-series matches to date,” Inverarity said in announcing the squad.
“Ricky’s record speaks for itself,” he said. “He is one of the truly great performers in the history of Australian ODI cricket, with his reputation enhanced further by him captaining Australia to two World Cup victories.”
Inverarity said that Ponting’s contribution to the Australia ODI team went far beyond his batting statistics and brilliant fielding.
“The example he sets in every respect and his extraordinarily positive influence in the dressing-room is acknowledged by all,” he said, while hailing Ponting’s “selfless” willingness to stand in for Clarke recently.
Ponting’s sacking comes less than a month after his dominant role in Australia’s 4-0 clean sweep of the home Test series against India.
He was second for most series runs only to Clarke, scoring 544 at 108.80 with two centuries and three half-centuries.
Ponting is still considered an obvious selection in the Australia side for the coming Test series in the West Indies in April, although he is now likely to miss the five ODIs that precede the Test series.
“We know what you don’t like, but what’s your constructive proposal for a global agreement on aviation?” the Commissioner for Climate Action asked the countries in a message posted on her Twitter account.
Hedegaard also warned that Brussels would not suspend the rule requiring all airlines to buy pollution permits to fly to Europe, despite stiff opposition led by the United States, China and India.
Countries opposing the scheme that entered into force January 1 are meeting in Moscow on Tuesday to draw up retaliation measures against the Emissions Trading Scheme.
The China Air Transport Association, which represents the country’s airlines, has warned that Chinese carriers would not pay the charge.
Meanwhile, US and Canadian airlines had filed a complaint against the scheme at the EU’s top court, although the challenge was thrown out by the court.
Under the EU scheme, airlines would have to pay for 15 percent of the polluting rights accorded to them in 2012, the figure then rising to 18 percent between 2013 and 2020.
It also calls for fines of 100 euros per tonne of CO2 against companies that refuse to comply, or a flight ban as a last resort.
