Learn with your ears

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SHANGHAI : Chinese regulators are widening their investigation into contaminated food amid growing signs that the toxic industrial chemical melamine has leached into the nation's animal feed supplies, posing health risks to;consumers.
The announcement came after food safety tests earlier this week found that eggs produced in three different provinces in China were contaminated with melamine, which is blamed for resulting in kidney stones and renal failure in infants.
The reports are another serious blow to China's agriculture industry, which is already struggling to cope with its worst food safety scandal in decades after melamine-tainted milk supplies sickened over 50,000 children, caused at least four deaths and led to global recalls of goods produced with Chinese dairy products earlier this;fall. The tests have led to recalls of eggs and consumer;warnings. In Hong Kong, food safety officials announced this week that they would begin testing a wider variety of foods for melamine, including vegetables, flour and meat products.
The cases are fueling global concerns about Chinese food.
In the United States, worried consumers frantically e-mailed one another on Thursday and Friday about the possibility of melamine-tainted Halloween treats following a spate of news reports that some candies and chocolates made in China or with ingredients sourced in China had tested positive for high levels of melamine or been destroyed in recent weeks as a cautionary;measure. On the mainland, Shanghai and other cities are moving aggressively to test a wide variety of food products for melamine, including fish and livestock feed, according to the state-run news media, which has in recent days carried multiple reports on melamine in animal;feed.” The FDA, along with state and local authorities, have been sampling products in Asian markets since mid-September for traces of;melamine.

A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said the agency was adjusting a nationwide sampling of products for melamine “as necessary. “The FDA is currently re-evaluating its overall approach to keeping these products out of the U.
“Thus far, most of FDA's testing of milk and milk-derived ingredients and products from China focused on human foods, but have included animal feeds as well,” said the spokeswoman, Stephanie Kwisnek.;market.S.
Hong Kong food safety officials said a child would have to eat about two dozen of the eggs in a single day to become;ill.”
Asian food safety experts warned consumers not to grow too alarmed over the finding of tainted eggs because they contained much lower concentrations of melamine than the powdered baby formula that caused such widespread problems in;China. .
Still, if eggs, milk and animal feed supplies are tainted, there is the specter of an even wider array of foods that could come under scrutiny, everything from pork and chicken supplies to bread, biscuits, eggs, cakes, seafood and;candy. And last year, United States regulators put tough restrictions on the amount of melamine allowed in food;products.
Melamine was banned as an animal feed additive in China in July 2007.
“I heard some melamine dealers still sell to animal feed producers,” said Qin Huaizhen, manager at the Gaocheng Kaishun Chemical Co.
But interviews on Friday, and over the past year, with several Chinese chemical dealers who sell melamine suggests that melamine scrap, the substantially cheaper waste left over after producing melamine, continued to be added to animal and fish;feed. “In Shandong province many animal feed manufacturers buy melamine;scrap. in city of Shijiazhuang, though he insisted he has never sold melamine to animal feed producers.
Kidney experts said that there has been very little research into how the chemical disrupts kidney function.
Kidney experts said that there has been very little research into how the chemical disrupts kidney function. Dr. Fredric Coe, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said that melamine is likely concentrated in the kidneys into crystals that the body cannot dissolve. Those crystals clog many of the kidney's close toly one million nephrons, which are tiny filtering units, in a process very different from the usual way kidney stones are formed, Coe said. Urination slows or ceases, and patients suffer acute kidney;failure.
Some food-safety experts are perplexed as to how melamine was allowed to seep into China's food supplies after melamine-tainted animal feed exports from China were blamed last year for sickening dogs and cats in the United States, touching off international trade and food safety disputes between the two;countries.

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NEW DELHI : A series of apparently synchronized explosions tore through four towns in the troubled state of Assam in northeastern India on Thursday, killing at least 74 people and leaving about 350 wounded, according to witnesses and the;police.
The bombs were aimed at crowded markets and government buildings like courts and police stations, witnesses said. The attacks, among the bloodiest in recent months, left streets littered with bodies and the wreckage of cars and motorcycles, according to witnesses and photographers at the;scene.
For many years, Assam State has been riven by a separatist insurgency led by the United Liberation Front of Assam, which demands independence for this region of some 26 million people and is often blamed by the authorities for bombings.
There were no immediate reports that any group had taken responsibility for the;bombings.
According to witnesses and the police, at least nine blasts rocked the four towns attacked on Thursday, including three in the state capital, Guwahati. Last month, ethnic clashes left 57 people dead in the area when indigenous Bodos fought with Bengali-speaking;Muslims. One of the bombs there had been left in the parking lot of the district;court. “It is a very black day for;us. .
Mumtaj Ahmed, a police officer in Guwahati, said the toll of 74 dead included 43 in Guwahati alone.”
Witnesses said local people, angered by the late arrival of the police and the fire brigade, pelted government vehicles with stones until the authorities declared a curfew to clear the;streets.
In one of the explosions, in the refinery town of Bongaigaon, the police were tipped off about a suspicious-looking motorcycle, and moved it away from crowded areas. The total number of wounded was around 350, he;said. But it exploded, wounding two police officers, the police;said. But it exploded, wounding two police officers, the police;said.
In New Delhi, Shakeel Ahmad, the minister of state for home affairs, told reporters that the situation in Assam had been “very volatile, the government was on high alert and, even then, this has;happened. He said the police had been on high alert after tips that an attack might be;imminent. Before Thursday's explosions, about 150 people had died in seven recent attacks around the;country.”
The blasts in Assam were the latest in a series of bombings in several parts of India as national elections approach. Last Friday, though, the police said they had arrested three people suspected of involvement in bombings the previous month in Malegaon, a small city in western Maharashtra State that has long simmered with religious;tension.
India's Muslims have grown resentful at being blamed by the authorities for many of the attacks. The bomb in Malegaon exploded in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood, killing four;people.
At least one of the suspects belonged to the youth wing of a Hindu nationalist political party, police officials said, and several Indian news organizations have described the case as the first glimpse into radical Hindu groups that plot terrorist attacks. Other flash points include insurgents in Kashmir and Maoist guerrillas across central;India.
In other violence, clashes between Hindus and Christians have swept through eastern Orissa State.

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KABUL, Afghanistan : A suspected Taliban suicide bomber shot his way into the Ministry of Information and Culture in central Kabul on Thursday, then blew himself up, leaving at least two others dead and severely damaging a kindergarten in the building, officials and witnesses;said.
The blast, which also wounded at least 21 people, set off a panicky scramble by parents working at the ministry to find their kindergartners, but only two appeared to be among the wounded, said Kabul's police chief, General Muhammad Ayub Salangi, after he toured the;scene.
The attack was notable more for its audacity than for the number of victims.
No senior officials were killed or hurt in the attack, but ministry workers emerged shaken from the five-story;building. The ability of Taliban insurgents and their affiliates to strike favourably at guarded targets in the Afghan capital has hurt confidence in the government and the American-led war effort;here. A second man died later, according to the deputy police chief, General Ali Shah;Ahmadazi.
The bomber first fatally shot a policeman at the building's entrance and then set off the explosion inside, Salangi said.

Akhtar Muhammad Amir, an official at the state-run Bakhtar news agency, said he was on the fifth floor when he heard shooting and then a huge;explosion. “Some of our staff were wounded by the flying glass from the;windows.
“Thick dust covered all the corridors, and all the windows of the offices were shattered,” he said. “Mothers were searching for their children,” he;said.”
He said the main conference hall and the adjacent kindergarten on the ground floor were badly damaged. Police and security officials swarmed around the front of the building, on one of the busiest streets in the;capital.
Part of one wall of the ministry was destroyed.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack within minutes in a telephone call to news agencies, saying that three suicide attackers were involved.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack within minutes in a telephone call to news agencies, saying that three suicide attackers were involved.
The Taliban, which are fighting the government of President Hamid Karzai and his American-led backers, have made repeated attacks on government buildings and convoys of foreign forces in the;capital.
Salangi said the attack was similar to one in January on the five-star Serena Hotel when at least three bombers in police uniforms penetrated security by attacking with gunfire and successive suicide;bombs. He linked the attack to Afghanistan's recent diplomatic moves to make peace with opposition groups.
Karzai condemned Thursday's attack from Istanbul, where he was attending a conference.
This month the Taliban said its supporters had fatally shot a 34-year-old British aid worker in Kabul whom it accused of spreading Christianity. .
The Taliban have said they will continue attacks until foreign forces withdraw from the;country. The Afghan police also said the killings of two other foreigners running the international courier service DHL in Kabul were an attack by;terrorists.

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SEOUL : Many South Koreans have taken to blaming LeeMan Brothers for their nation's economic;woes.
No, they do not mean the failed American investment bank Lehman Brothers.
Dubbed the CEO president, Lee swept into office in February promising to use his business acumen as a former construction company executive to revive the nation's economy. Rather, they are making a play on the names of the South Korean president, Lee Myung Bak, and his finance minister, Kang Man Soo, whom many here criticize as handling the recent market turmoil;inconsistently.
On Thursday, his government seemed to get a much-needed boost when the U. Instead, he stumbled from the start and now finds himself fighting to regain credibility as South Korea, buffeted by the global financial turbulence, careens unsteadily toward a;recession. Federal Reserve agreed to open credit lines worth up to $30 billion to South Korea to alleviate a shortage of foreign currency that has hobbled its;banks.S. The country's stock market and its currency, the won, have been down more than 30 percent this year, though they gained some ground on Thursday.
Still, critics say that Lee and his cabinet responded slowly to the crisis, which has struck South Korea and other emerging market nations with a vengeance.

But supporters say much of that criticism is unfair, given that the crisis originated in the United States. Critics also say that Lee's government sent confusing and even contradictory signals at a time when communication was crucial for restoring;confidence.
Backers and opponents alike agree that Lee still has a battle ahead to win back the faith of South Korea's often fickle public, which turned against him soon after he took office as a result of a trade deal resuming American beef;imports. They also say that Lee is starting to find his stride, coming up with tax cuts and public money to stem the;crisis. “The public's loss of faith has hung over him during this financial;crisis.
“He is still struggling to live down the beef fiasco,” said Jasper Kim, a professor of international relations at Ewha Women's University in Seoul. An Oct.”
Lee still appears to have a long way to go in regaining that trust. That is up from an approval rating of 15 percent in June, when streets in Seoul were filled with huge candlelight vigils against the American beef deal. 20 opinion poll showed 24 percent of Koreans supporting Lee, and 31 percent approving of his handling of the economic crisis.
“People had high expectations of Lee Myung Bak with his image as being the economic president,” said Yoon Hee Woong, a researcher at the Korea Society Opinion Institute, which conducted the polls. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus five percentage;points.”
After first playing down the threat, Lee changed his tune, saying last week that the financial crisis was worse than the crash of 1998, when the won had plummeted. “People got disappointed because they have yet to see the government;perform.
On Monday, he made a rare address to the National Assembly, warning South Koreans to “pull together their strength and wisdom again,” a reference to the nation's recovery from;1998.
On Monday, he made a rare address to the National Assembly, warning South Koreans to “pull together their strength and wisdom again,” a reference to the nation's recovery from;1998.
“President Lee was slow to realize the seriousness of the crisis,” said Kim Jung Sik, an economics professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “But he realizes it;now. . The finance minister, Kang, initially backed a weak won to bolster exports. However, when that led to politically unpopular price increases for imported oil and other commodities, the government intervened to jack up the currency. When financial markets started tumbling the previous month, the government appeared to change again, not intervening to halt the won's;fall.
Critics say that Lee's administration has also appeared inconsistent on another crucial issue, foreign reserves. The administration has said that South Korea holds enough U.S. dollars to repay all its loans from overseas but has also urged companies and individuals to help the nation by exchanging their dollars for;won.
“One day, he says we're O.K. The next day, he says we are in trouble,” said Lee Geun, a professor of international studies at Seoul National University. “His flip-flopping has been very;confusing.”
Analysts say Lee badly needs to appear effective during the current crisis, after the setbacks on his major economic initiatives so;far.

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SHAH ALAM, Malaysia : The Malaysian High Court acquitted a close friend of the deputy prime minister Friday of abetting the murder of a Mongolian woman, a ruling that revived opposition claims of political interference in the;judiciary. . The court ordered two police officers accused of carrying out the killing to remain on;trial.
Abdul Razak had been charged with abetting the October 2006 killing of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a Mongolian interpreter who was blown up with military-grade explosives in a jungle clearing close to Shah Alam, the capital of Selangor State.
The case, which captured national attention because of the gruesome nature of the killing and the personalities involved, has not directly implicated the;government.
Mohamad Zaki ruled there was a sufficiently strong case against the two police officers who are accused of carrying out the killing. Only fragmented remains of her body were;found. He ordered the two men to enter their;defense. 7,;2006.

Shortly after the ruling, Abdul Razak walked out a free man, almost two years after police arrested him at his office in Kuala Lumpur on Nov.
The prosecution alleged that he ordered the killing after Shaariibuu, 28, began pestering him for;money.
Abdul Razak, 48, would have faced the death penalty had be been convicted of abetting the killing of Shaariibuu, with whom he confessed to having an eight-month;affair. Najib, who is expected to succeed Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in March, has insisted that he never knew Shaariibuu and repeatedly denied any involvement in the;case.
Opposition leaders had repeatedly tried to link Najib and his wife to Shaariibuu's death.
The opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said Abdul Razak's acquittal failed to address doubts about the way the case had been handled.
The opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said Abdul Razak's acquittal failed to address doubts about the way the case had been handled.
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The prosecutor, Abdul Majid Hamzah, said he would consider filing an;appeal

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TOKYO : A high-ranking Japanese military official was dismissed Friday for writing an essay stating that the United States had ensnared Japan into World War II, denying that Japan had waged wars of aggression in Asia and justifying Japanese;colonialism.
The Defense Ministry fired General Toshio Tamogami, chief of staff of Japan's air force, late Friday night, only hours after his essay was posted on a private company's Web site.
The Defense Minister, Yasukazu Hamada, said the essay included an “inappropriate” assessment of the war, adding: “It was improper for a person in his capacity as air force chief of staff to publicly state a view clearly different from the;government's. The quick dismissal seemed intended to head off criticism from China, South Korea and other Asian nations that have reacted angrily to previous Japanese denials of its militarist;past. But it was a rare formulation from inside Japan's military, which, as Japan has been shedding its postwar pacifism in recent years, has gained a more prominent;role.”
In the essay, Tamogami, 60, elaborated a rightist view of Japan's wartime history shared by many nationalist politicians.

The article was posted on the Web site of a real estate developer called Apa Group after taking the $30,000 first prize in an essay-writing contest sponsored by the;company.
Japan's military — whose operations are restricted by the nation's war-renouncing Constitution — should be allowed to possess “offensive weaponry” and widen its defense activities with allies, the general also;wrote.;Roosevelt.
General Tamogami wrote that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 and thereby drew the United States into World War II after being caught in “a trap” set by President Franklin D.
He denied that Japan had invaded China and the Korean Peninsula, arguing that Japanese forces became embroiled in domestic conflicts on the Asian;continent.
“Roosevelt had become president on his public pledge not to go to war, so in order to start a war between the United States and Japan, it had to appear that Japan took the first shot,” he;wrote. “But we need to realize that many Asian countries take a positive view of the Greater East Asia War.
“Even now, there are many people who think that our country's aggression caused unbearable suffering to the countries of Asia during the Greater East Asia War,” he wrote, using the term favored by Japan's right to refer to World War II.”
Since the mid-1990's, the Japanese government has officially apologized for its wartime past and acknowledged its aggression in Asia. It is certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor;nation.
Few politicians have spoken as comprehensively as General Tamogami did, telegraphing instead their sympathies with the rightist view of history. But in recent years, nationalist politicians belonging to the rightist of the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party have waged a campaign to revise Japan's wartime;history. Aso, whose family's mining business used forced laborers during World War II, also said Koreans gladly adopted Japanese;names. .”
Last year, Shinzo Abe, the prime minister at the time, caused anger in Asia and the United States by denying the Japanese military's involvement in recruiting wartime sex slaves known euphemistically as “comfort;women.
Hours before the general's dismissal, Aso said, “Even though he published it in a private capacity, given his position, it is not;appropriate. Japan has yet to;respond.”
His comments led the House of Representatives to adopt a non-binding resolution calling on Japan to acknowledge and apologize for its wartime sex slavery.

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DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan : Suspected U.S.
The new strikes raised the number of such attacks to at least 17 since August. .S. The surge has angered many Pakistanis and put strains on a seven-year U.
The apparent attacks by American unmanned planes come amid Washington's frustration at what U. alliance with Pakistan, where rising violence is exacerbating economic problems gnawing at the nuclear-armed country's;stability. officials say is Pakistan's failure to curb Islamic extremists blamed for attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan - and suspected of planning Sept.S.
Dozens of foreign Qaeda members, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding in northwestern Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the Afghan;frontier. 11-style terror strikes in the;West. Residents frequently say that civilians, sometimes women and children, are among the;dead.
The United States rarely confirms or denies attacking suspected militant hideouts inside Pakistan and the identities of those killed are only occasionally made public.
He had been living in Pakistan's tribal region for about three years and had been organizing attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan, they said.

The Qaeda member reportedly killed Friday was identified as Abu Kasha Iraqi, the intelligence officials;said.
The purported Qaeda figure was among 20 people killed when two missiles hit a house and a car in Mir Ali village in North Waziristan, the officials said, citing reports from agents and informers in the;area. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the;media.
Pakistan's government says the strikes - plus a highly unusual ground raid by U.
About two hours later, two more missiles hit a village in South Waziristan, killing seven people, including a number of foreign extremists, the officials;said. commandos in September - violate its sovereignty.S.
Analysts have said that U. It insists the Pakistani military is tackling the militants, pointing to the current offensive just north of Waziristan that has killed some 1,500;insurgents. officials may be reasoning that whatever damage to American-Pakistani ties as a result of the strikes can be repaired when President George W. officials may be reasoning that whatever damage to American-Pakistani ties as a result of the strikes can be repaired when President George W. Bush leaves office and a new president is;inaugurated.
In addition, the frequency of the strikes has led some people to speculate that Pakistani leaders have privately agreed to the attacks on the condition they can publicly criticize;them.
The government's alliance with the United States is deeply unpopular among lawmakers and many ordinary Pakistanis, who say the cooperation fuels extremist violence and complain that the raids prompt retaliatory terrorist attacks by militant groups entrenched in the tribal;areas.
In a sign of the resilience of the extremists, a suicide bomber earlier Friday attacked a police chief outside his house in the northwestern city of Mardan, missing the official but killing three other officers and five civilians, the authorities;said.
The suicide attacker, who was on foot, hit the first vehicle in a convoy as it emerged from the police chief's residence, but the officer was in another car behind the;gate.
“I was the target, but such attacks cannot stop us from doing our duty,” said the chief, Akhtar Ali;Shah.
TV footage showed a badly damaged police pickup truck just outside the house and rescue workers loading bloodied survivors into;ambulances.
There have been more than 90 suicide attacks on civilian, military and Western targets since July 2007, killing nearly 1,200 people, according to military;statistics.

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Berlin public transportation company BVG has banned a beloved iPhone application developed by a 21-year-old student to help people navigate the citys intricate metro system, daily taz reported on Friday.

The program, Fahr-Info-Berlin, was developed by Jonas Witt and has been downloaded for free some 20,000 times from the iTunes App Store since July.

The application which locates users via their mobile telephone network, tells them which BVG metro stops they can find nearby, and helps plan timely routes is popular with users, but not BVG. The decision has raised user hackles on internet forums, the paper reported. The company contacted Witt three weeks ago, telling him the program violated their copyright and demanding he remove it from iTunes. .

Witt said he thought the company would be happy that as many people as possible were well-informed and happily on their way with the bus and the metro. That is our copyright and Apple is one of the richest firms in the world, she said, adding that BVG plans to develop their own version of the application soon.

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Michael Ballack will remain captain of the German national football team after clearing the air with coach Joachim Lw the target of criticism by the Cheslea star.

Ballack flew in from London for a whirlwind meeting with Lw on Thursday evening in Frankfurt. The face-to-face chat became necessary after Ballack was forced to apologize for undermining his coachs authority in recent weeks.

Ive realized it wasnt right to go public and I regret that the impression was created that I wanted to criticize Joachim Lw in his capacity as national coach, Ballack said in a statement released by the German Football Association DFB.

The Cheslea midfielder caused a stink after telling the media that Lw needed to show more respect to senior national team players such as Torsten Frings, who has been sidelined in the squad. But Lw on Friday that all was forgiven if not forgotten.

Despite his public apology last weekend, there was widespread speculation in the German press that Ballack would at the very least be forced to step down as team captain.

Michael Ballack will remain my captain. All sporting and personel decisions will be made by the coaching staff Ive made this unequivocally clear to Michael. But the captain has stick to the rules too, Lw said.

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Hamburg politicians are spearheading a discussion about racist discrimination by club bouncers in the citys famous red-light Reeperbahn district after recent complaints from an Ethiopian patron.

After a first round of talks that included club owners, politicians and city officials, Justice Minister Till Steffen told Hamburger Abendblatt this week that the city needs to hone the criteria the doormen use to turn guests away.

This August, Ethiopian human rights lawyer Awol Allo, in Hamburg attending a summer programme at the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, filed complaints with the Hamburg Department of Justice and the federal anti-discrimination office after being turned away from clubs in the Reeperbahn area five times. .

I was the only black person in a large group, and the only person prevented from entering the clubs, and thats the most offending part, Allo told us on Friday from his home in Ethiopia. Daily Hamburger Abendblatt decided to substantiate his claims, sending two men one from the Ivory Coast, and one of Iranian descent to try their luck at Reeperbahn clubs.

Allo said he spoke to several Hamburg residents with immigration backgrounds who said they had had similar experiences. They were rejected from eight of nine clubs, the paper reported. They told me the club owners were allowed to turn me away, which is against Germanys obligation to protect against discrimination.

I was actually more concerned about the police than the club owners, Allo told us, adding that their reaction ultimately spurred him to make official complaints.

Today we can tell the politicians what our take on the situation is, Mahmood Alkassaby, owner of the Location 1 2 3 club, told the paper.

Club owners at the round table said they do not discriminate, though they did admit mistakes are sometimes made. We ban only dark-skinned customers who cause problems. That there is not discrimination.

Doorman Viktor Hacker said We have to be very strict, but we arent racists.

Doorman Viktor Hacker said We have to be very strict, but we arent racists.

Justice Minister Till Steffen, who wrote Allo a personal letter promising to pursue the issue, told the paper he plans to have more such discussions, adding that club owners had convinced politicians they were not practicing overt discrimination.

Sometimes we size up a customer incorrectly and make a poor decision, Thomas Gehle from Klub Astoria said.

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Allo, who left Germany on August 31 to return to Ethiopia, awaits news on whether he can get legal aid to press charges in the German court system