Learn with your ears

What does “bad economic times” mean for your community? My guess is whatever these new needs are, your library is in the position to help out. Here are some places people may be hurtingHigh gas prices - they will go higher- maybe it’s time to add that kiosk at the grocery store, are there any car pooling social network sites from your area that people need to know about?New or temporary homeless or hungry- people are loosing their homes and some people are just falling hard enough to be pushed down to the next level or maybe they just need a meal for their family … a meeting I attended at ALA suggested libraries have lists of the agencies that, shelters, foodbanks, etc that people may need, ma=ybe you may want to print them up and leave them out so people can take them without having to ask. Commuters might be sacrificing their audiobooks- time to make up some PSAs for local radio stations about your free audio books- and if iPod users can download- make sure you say so… The list is endless- you are welcome to add your own. The point is, bad economics hits every member of your community, the question is - are you asking them what they need and figuring out which areas you can help solve those problems?library marketing (Source: The "M" Word - Marketing Libraries)

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WASHINGTON : President George W. Bush has held private talks with five prominent Chinese dissidents, and has urged China's foreign minister to relax restrictions on human rights, as part of an intensifying White House effort to put pressure on Beijing before Bush travels there in a little more than a week for the summer Olympic;Games.
Earlier, Bush dropped in on a meeting between his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and China's foreign minister, Yang;Jiechi.
Bush received the dissidents - Harry Wu, Wei Jingsheng, Rebiya Kadeer, Sasha Gong and Bob Fu - on Tuesday in the White House residence, where he “assured them that he will carry the message of freedom as he travels to Beijing,” said his press secretary, Dana;Perino. The president has faced criticism from human rights advocates and members of Congress for his decision to attend.
The back-to-back meetings came shortly before Bush leaves for an Asia trip that will include the Olympics.
“This is a welcome step, and President Bush should now speak forcefully about China's human rights situation, because quiet diplomacy alone has shown little success,” T. But his meetings Tuesday drew praise from some of those;critics.

In a report issued this week, Amnesty International accused China of breaking its promise to open up freedoms in exchange for permission from the International Olympic Committee to host the 2008 Games. Kumar, the Asia advocacy director at Amnesty International USA,;said.
The official said the dissidents told Bush that an estimated 80 million to 100 million Chinese are worshiping in underground churches. A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss delicate diplomatic matters, said Bush shared that;concern.
Bush has long said that he views the Olympics as a sporting event, not a political one. “He wants to see that open up,” the official said, adding that Bush also wants to press China to relax restrictions on the news;media.
Michael Green, an Asia expert and former adviser to Bush, said the White House must now contemplate how Bush should express his concerns while he is in Beijing. But he has also said he would use his attendance at the Games to press China on human rights;matters.
Green said Bush's meeting with the dissidents was aimed at both addressing his critics and sending a pointed message to the;Chinese. During a trip in 2005, the president attended a state-controlled church there and then held a news conference about it, a tactic that Green said got the attention of China's;leaders. “These are people designed to get the Chinese's attention.
“These are very high-profile people,” Green said. It was an important move to let Chinese leaders know that he's not satisfied with the;progress. It was not just a political move to provide cover at home.”

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BEIJING : It was with a straight face the other day that Liu Shaowu, the man with the responsibility of ensuring security for the coming Olympics, announced that the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee would designate three areas in this city for protests and demonstrations while the Games take;place.
“The country's law grants people the right to hold peaceful demonstrations,” Liu intoned as he named three public parks where protests would be;allowed. Still, the announcement, with its recognition of the right to protest, was welcomed by some people.
But this can happen, or course, only after the necessary permits have been obtained from the police, something that has proved virtually impossible in the past.
“The move to set aside protest areas is in line with Beijing's promise to the International Olympic Committee to adhere to Olympic traditions, such as free expression outside sporting venues,” Mo Yuchuan, executive director of the Research Center for Constitutional and Administrative Law at the Renmin University of China, was quoted as saying by The China;Daily. They see it as a realization of the hope that the holding of the Games will encourage China to loosen up a bit on free expression, which, in any case, is guaranteed in its;constitution. They could perhaps be farmers angry about land seizures in the countryside or miners upset about the lack of security measures in coal;mines.
It remains to be seen whether people actually dare to take the Chinese authorities up on this invitation to hold protest demonstrations.
Would-be protesters are no doubt mindful of past Chinese behavior, in which expressions of opinion that were usually not allowed were tolerated to make an impression on some very important visiting foreigners.

But the fact is that whatever the law might be in China, protesters have been far more likely to be met with batons, arrests and imprisonment - and a news blackout on their grievances - than with protection of their constitutional;rights.
In 1998, with President Bill Clinton due to arrive for a state visit, the authorities did not stop a group of dissidents from forming an opposition political party. Then, once the foreigners had left, the sledgehammer;hit.
But no sooner had Clinton left China than the new party was dissolved and its leader, Xu Wenli, was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Evidently they didn't want foreign news reports to be all about arrests of dissidents on the eve of an American presidential;visit.
So, my guess is that there won't be many significant protests in Beijing's parks during the Games. Xu's conviction was for “subverting state power,” one of the catch-all legal devices by which China's state prosecutors transform criticism of the ruling party into acts of;treason.
Still, in general, China seems to be reversing the pattern of the past. But there may certainly be efforts by determined people to unfurl banners and - given the promises made to the International Olympic Committee, or IOC, to allow freedom of expression as a condition for holding the Games - maybe the police won't crack;down.
PEN, the international writers' organization, accuses China of carrying out “a grinding and relentless campaign to jail or silence prominent dissident voices” that has intensified in recent months. Rather than allowing a bit of a thaw in anticipation of the foreign presence, the security forces are actually cracking down;pre-emptively.
Among them, for example, is Hu Jia, who was dragged away from his wife and infant daughter in December and sentenced to three and a half years in prison. PEN has a list of 44 writers and journalists in prison, a dozen or so arrested in the past few;months.
In other words, China is opening up areas for protest in order, as Mo said, to fulfill its promises to the IOC, even as their arrests of people like Hu prove that the promises are being;broken. His crime was disseminating information showing that China was not fulfilling the very promises on human rights it made to secure the;Olympics. And with the great dream of holding the Olympic Games about to be realized, the regime is absolutely determined to ensure that nobody be allowed to spoil the joyous;atmosphere. And with the great dream of holding the Olympic Games about to be realized, the regime is absolutely determined to ensure that nobody be allowed to spoil the joyous;atmosphere.
But China's leaders also know that many in this country seethe with anger and discontent. Publicly, the Chinese say that most of their security measures are aimed at preventing a terrorist attack, and, of course, everybody wishes them success in that. But they are probably just as worried that discontent inside China itself will roil the smooth and shiny surface they want for the;Olympics.

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KUALA LUMPUR : The Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said Tuesday that he had proof that accusations he had sodomized a male aide were false and cited a purported medical report published on the;Internet.
The authenticity of the report, said to have been issued by a doctor at the Pusrawi Hospital in Kuala Lumpur and to have ruled out sodomy, could not be verified Tuesday.
Still, Anwar said he stood;vindicated. Hospital officials and the police declined to;comment.
“I condemn in the strongest terms their negligence, dishonesty and recklessness in humiliating the nation by dragging us all through this vile and filthy charade,” said Anwar, who had faced a similar accusation a decade ago when he was deputy prime;minister.
Anwar said at a news conference that the police must stop the investigation and accused senior police officials of being part of a political conspiracy to derail his campaign to end the governing coalition's 51-year lock on;power.
Copies of the alleged medical report were published Monday on Malaysiakini, Malaysia Today and other sites.

The new accusation, made by a male aide, surfaced last month as Anwar became a powerful force in Malaysian politics and said he was poised to unseat the government, which is holding on to power with a thin 30-seat majority in;Parliament.
The Web sites published photocopies of the purported diagnosis, dated June;28. A doctor concluded in the report that there were no medical indications that the 23-year-old male aide had had anal sex, as he had reported to;police.
The reports said the doctor had advised the aide to go to a government hospital for a second examination.
Hospital officials refused to confirm its existence, but Anwar said he was convinced that it was not a fake because the police and the hospital had not denied that it was ;genuine.
The Malaysiakini and Malaysia Today Web sites said the report had been leaked by unidentified;sources. It is not clear what transpired there, but the accuser went to a police station and filed a complaint the same;day.” He accused the aide of being “an outright liar working hand in glove with those in power to assassinate my;character.
Anwar said the report confirmed his contention that the allegations “are baseless and politically motivated. He was barred from contesting general elections in March - when his coalition made spectacular gains - as a result of a corruption conviction in connection with the 1998 sodomy accusations.”
If the report turns out to be genuine, it would bolster Anwar's campaign to return to Parliament in a by-election.
Anwar denied both charges but was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The ban expired in;April.
. The sodomy charge was overturned in 2004, when he was freed after six years in;jail

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WASHINGTON : Previewing President George W. Bush's trip to Asia next week, the White House said that it expects China to show it is loosening restrictions on free expression - and not just during the Olympic;Games. “We are examining for structural change.
“What we are examining for in China is not gestures,” said Dennis Wilder, senior director for Asian Affairs at the White House National Security Council.”
As scrutiny grows over how China is treating its people and the visiting news media, the White House defended Bush's approach to the Beijing Olympics, which open next Friday. We are examining for long-term;change.
Bush's time in China is built around attending sporting events, however - so much so that his agenda is being kept largely open so he can pick which events to;watch. Bush plans to prod the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, privately about human rights and to speak publicly about religious freedom after attending a church service in;Beijing. The symbolic centerpiece will be the Olympics opening ceremony, which Bush plans to;attend.
Bush is visiting South Korea and Thailand before spending more than three days in Beijing.
Wilder acknowledged the concern that Bush's presence at the Games adds legitimacy to the Chinese government, a point raised by some of the prominent Chinese activists whom Bush met with at the White House on Tuesday.

The White House has sought to show its commitment to human rights as criticism has mounted over China's security crackdown and limits on free;speech.
The goal is to influence China's direction without politicizing the Olympics, Wilder;said. Wilder said Bush countered that he could do more good by attending the Olympics, pressing his points with Chinese leaders and showing his faith in the Chinese;people.
Noting that China has set up protest zones, Wilder questioned whether foreigners, not just Chinese, would be able to protest, and whether the Chinese government would truly allow people to express their;views.
“If you don't have a good working relationship with the Chinese government, how do you do that?” Wilder;said.
Bush leaves Washington on Monday and arrives in Seoul on Tuesday night.
“That has yet to be demonstrated, I think, that the Chinese are truly moving in that direction,” Wilder;said.S. On Wednesday, he will meet with the South Korean president, Lee Myung Bak, hold a news conference and visit a U.
On Thursday, Bush is scheduled to give a speech in Bangkok about the future of the U. Army garrison before flying to Bangkok to meet with Prime Minister Samak;Sundaravej. presence in East;Asia.S.
Bush will be in China from the evening of Aug.
Bush will be in China from the evening of Aug. 7 through Aug. 10. During that time, he will help dedicate the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing, meet Chinese leaders, go to church and attend one of the marquee Olympic events: the basketball game between the United States and;China.
He is expected to have a social visit with Vladimir Putin, the former Russian president who now serves as prime;minister.
Bush will not hold formal meetings with world leaders during the Olympic Games, Wilder said. Bush returns to Washington on Aug.;11.

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A Chinese schoolteacher who posted his photographs of quake-damaged schools online has been ordered to a labor camp for a year, a human rights group said;Wednesday.
The group, Human Rights in China, identified the teacher as Liu Shaokun and said he had worked at Guanghan Middle School in Deyang City in southwest Sichuan Province, which was ravaged by the powerful earthquake May;12.
His wife was informed this month that Liu had been ordered to serve a year of re-education through labor, an extrajudicial system that sidesteps the need for trial or formal;charge.
He was detained June 25, and the principal of his school was told that he was being held for “disseminating rumors and destroying social order,” the group;said.

The devastation to families was magnified because many were their parents' only children, because of China's one-child;policy.
The government has said that about 7,000 classrooms collapsed during the quake, and that an estimated 10,000 of the close toly 70,000 dead were;schoolchildren.
China seemed to be moving into a new era of openness after the earthquake, with vigorous reporting from domestic news organizations in the months before the Beijing Olympic Games, which begin Aug.
Parents have demanded investigations into whether shoddy construction led to the school collapses, but local officials have;resisted. But local government officials and law enforcement officers have undermined that trend, trying to quell protests by parents, blocking their gatherings and offering them pensions in exchange for their;silence. 8.
“Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to re-education through labor to silence and lock up concerned citizens like teacher Liu Shaokun and others,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of the rights group, in a;statement.

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BEIJING : Tourists leaving the west gate of the Temple of Heaven next month will probably not notice Song Wei's home across the street. Nor are spectators along the Olympic marathon route likely to stop by Sun Ruonan's restaurant;close toby. Both have held on despite pressure to move.
Song and Sun live along Beijing's central axis in neighborhoods that have been gutted to make the city look clean and orderly for the Olympics.
A veil of green plastic netting now covers Sun's restaurant. They will spend the Olympics behind walls or screens erected to keep their property out of public;view. The authorities deemed his little block of commerce an;eyesore. Song's house and several shops that he rents to migrant families were surrounded by a 10-foot-tall brick wall last week, part of a last-minute beautification campaign. “But why are you building a wall around;us?”
A mysterious notice appeared beside the shops on July 17, typed on white paper and signed by no one.
“We all support the Olympics,” said Song, 42, a Beijing native who lives along the cycling and marathon routes. 93 South Tianqiao Road. It read, “In keeping with the government's request to rectify the Olympic environment, a wall will need to be built around No.

Now a wall conceals a little cove of entrepreneurship where several migrant families sell socks, book bags, pants, noodles and shish kebabs cooked in a spicy soup.” The next morning, several bricklayers showed up with a police;escort.
Zhao Fengxia, a neighbor who owns three shops, said she believed that officials and developers were using Olympic beautification as a pretext to strangle their business and put pressure on them to leave. One family behind the wall sells ice cream, popsicles and cold drinks from a refrigerator on;wheels. “We influence the city's appearance,” she;said. Feng Pan, 18, who helps her parents run a noodle shop, accepted the official view less critically. Beijing is polishing off one of the world's most expensive makeovers with a whitewash.
Many cities have sought to remake their image when hosting global events like the Olympics. Beijing has spent $130 million to restore buildings, many of them temples along the five-mile axis, according to the city's cultural relics;bureau. Along the historic central axis of the city that runs from the Yongdingmen Gate due north to the Drum Tower, the authorities are doing their best to give the old city a new face. On the wide boulevards leading up to the stadium, roadblocks have been set up and flowers, grass and trees;planted.
The Olympic Stadium was built on a northern extension of the traditional axis — a nod to the event's historic importance. It cuts through densely populated neighborhoods south of Tiananmen Square that are home to many of the city's migrants and working poor. It cuts through densely populated neighborhoods south of Tiananmen Square that are home to many of the city's migrants and working poor. To hide neighborhoods leveled for redevelopment in recent years or anything else the government considers unsightly, officials have put up;walls.
Song and his wife and 8-year-old daughter now live behind;one.
They have lived here since 1994, Song said, renting out his shops to families from the;provinces.
They live in close quarters. The Songs' room is barely big enough for a double bed on which the couple and daughter sleep. Two pet birds live in metal cages by the door. The birds, brown starlings with dark feathers and orange beaks, can parrot human speech. Song taught the birds one of the most famous poems of the Tang Dynasty. Every few minutes, it squawks lines from the poem: “The white sun falls over the mountains” or “The Yellow River flows into the;sea.”
Behind the room is a moonscape of weeds and rubble that used to be a slum. Song's place survived while the city razed the historically poor Tianqiao neighborhood and transformed it with shopping malls, wider streets and subdivisions. Song's predicament is familiar in the churn of this changing city. The developers want him to go, but he is holding out for more;money.
On July 17, several workers left a pile of red bricks on the sidewalk. The next morning, they returned, wearing sandals and straw hats, accompanied by the police and local officials. They set to work laying brick at 8:30;a.m.
The wall did not go up easily. After a brief shoving match, a little demonstration unfolded. Song hung three Chinese flags from the trunks of trees — and three white flags emblazoned with the 2008 Olympic logo. A migrant worker climbed a ladder and stuck up a poster that said, “Need Human;Rights!!!”

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WASHINGTON : A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan's most senior officials with new information about ties between the country's powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence;officials.
The CIA emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups who were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials;said. 11, 2001,;attacks.
The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new CIA assessment of the spy service's activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants since shortly after the Sept.
The CIA has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept.
The CIA assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal;areas.

That ISI officers have maintained important ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of previous news reports. 11;attacks.
The visit to Pakistan by the CIA official, Stephen Kappes, the deputy director, was described by several American military and intelligence officials in interviews in recent days. But the CIA and the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in the fight against;terrorism.
Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is currently in Washington meeting with Bush administration officials. Some of those who were interviewed made clear that they welcomed the decision by the CIA to take a harder line toward the ISI's dealings with militant;groups.
In an interview broadcast Tuesday on the American public television program “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” Gilani said he rejected as “not believable” any assertions of the ISI's links to the militants. A White House spokesperson, Gordon Johndroe, would not say whether Bush had raised the issue during his meeting Monday with;Gilani.
The Haqqani network and other militants who operate in the tribal areas along the Afghan border are said by American intelligence officials to be responsible for increasingly deadly complex attacks inside Afghanistan, and to have helped Al Qaeda establish a haven in the tribal;areas. “We would not allow that,” he;said.
The ISI has for decades maintained contacts with various militant groups in the tribal areas and elsewhere, both for gathering intelligence and as proxies to exert influence on neighboring India and;Afghanistan.
Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, the acting commander of American forces in Southwest Asia, made an unannounced visit to the tribal areas on Monday, a further reflection of American;concern.
With Pakistan's new civilian government struggling to assert control over the country's spy service, there are concerns in Washington that the ISI might become even more powerful than when President Pervez Musharraf controlled the military and the;government.
It is unclear whether the CIA officials have concluded that contacts between the ISI and militant groups are blessed at the highest levels of Pakistan's spy service and military, or are carried out by rogue elements of Pakistan's security;apparatus.
Kappes made his secret visit to Pakistan on July 12, joining Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for meetings with senior Pakistani civilian and military;leaders.
Last weekend, Pakistani military and intelligence officials thwarted an attempt by the government in Islamabad to put the ISI more directly under civilian;control.
The official was briefed on the meetings; like others who agreed to talk about it, he spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacy of Kappes's;message.
“It was a very pointed message saying, 'Look, we know there's a connection, not just with Haqqani but also with other bad guys and ISI, and we think you could do more and we want you to do more about it,”' one senior American official;said. Afghanistan's government has publicly blamed the ISI for having a hand in the attack, an accusation American officials have not;corroborated. Afghanistan's government has publicly blamed the ISI for having a hand in the attack, an accusation American officials have not;corroborated.
The decision to have Kappes deliver the message about the spy service was an unusual one, and could be a sign that the relationship between the CIA and ISI, which has long been marked by mutual suspicion as well as mutual dependence, may be;deteriorating.

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SYDNEY : Qantas Airways officials said Monday that an air safety directive issued by the United States Federal Aviation Authority with a warning about how oxygen cylinders were attached to Boeing 747 aircraft did not apply to the plane that was forced to make an emergency landing last week with a hole in its;fuselage.
The chief executive of Qantas, Geoff Dixon, said at a news conference Monday that he believed the airline had done all it could both before and during the incident on;Friday. “More than likely it was, but the things that were in our control we handled very, very well.
“We don't know and we can't speculate on what did happen to this aircraft but obviously there's every chance it has something to do with the aircraft and its something that may well have been out of our control,” he said. None of the 365 passengers and crew members on Flight QF30, which was en route from Hong Kong to Melbourne, was;injured.” Investigators are focusing on the possibility that a problem with an oxygen cylinder located in the forward cargo area ended up causing a six-foot hole to be torn from part of the plane's fuselage on Friday. But Monday, investigators in Manila said a valve and other fragments had been found that will be tested to see if they came from the;cylinder.
An oxygen cylinder is missing from the plane. The FAA directive became effective on May;7.
Media reports here said the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the FAA had ordered airline operators, including Qantas, to inspect and replace the brackets that held the oxygen canisters in place.
Passengers reported hearing a loud bang before the cabin lost;pressure.

However, both Qantas and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority say that the directive only applied to a limited number of aircraft, and that the damaged plane was not among;them. The pilots brought the plane down to 10,000 feet and turned it toward Manila.
At the time, the plane was flying at an altitude of 29,000 feet.
Investigators say that the fact that the floor of the passenger cabin above the hole was pushed up indicated that some kind of explosion was involved, but added that it may take some time to determine what may have caused;it. Only after landing did any of them see the hole, which was just below and in front of where the starboard wing joined the;fuselage.
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Among the first to examine the plane were security agencies, and investigators said they had uncovered no evidence that terrorism was;involved

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SEOUL : South Korea's Constitutional Court overturned a ban on doctors' telling parents the sex of their unborn babies, saying Thursday that the country has grown out of a preference for sons and that the restriction violates parents' right to;know.
South Korea introduced the ban in 1987 to try to prevent abortions of female fetuses in a country that had traditionally favored sons in the widespread Confucian belief that males carry on family lines.
On Thursday, the Constitutional Court said it was too restrictive to ban doctors from telling parents the sex of the unborn for the entire pregnancy because there was little chance of aborting fetuses older than six months due to risks for;mothers. Abortion has also been illegal but practiced;widely. “But it overly limits the basic rights of parents and physicians to put a blanket ban through the latter half of;pregnancy.
“The legislation's purpose is recognized in that it helps resolve the sex- ratio imbalance and protects the fetuses' right to life,” the court said in the ruling.

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It said the preference for sons in South Korea has lessened to where the ratio of newly born boys and girls in the country has almost reached the natural level of 100 girls to 106;boys