(AFP)
GENEVA — British rock group Duran Duran and heavy metal band Scorpions are among 55 world celebrities who have joined in recording a song to draw attention to the global warming crisis, organisers said on Monday.
The song is part of a mass media campaign on the threats of climate change organised by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.
The song entitled “Beds’r Burning”, which was originally recorded by the Australian group Midnight Oil in the 1980s, can be downloaded from the Internet for free and will be presented to the public at a launch in Paris on October 1.
“If we do not stop the (greenhouse gas) emissions today, global warming will be still be with us in 40 to 50 years,” warned Walter Fust, director of the Forum, at a press conference in Geneva.
The media campaign featuring the song is aimed at putting pressure on world leaders to reach an agreement on tackling climate change at a UN-sponsored conference in Copenhagen in December.
Some of the other popular artists who add their voices to the anti-global warming song include French ‘Piaf’ actress Marion Cotillard, Senegalese star Youssou N’dour, Irish singer/composer Bob Geldorf, Chinese singer Khalil Fong, and even a Nobel peace laureate, South African archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Chinese Sex Theme Park Knocked Down After Photos Released
foxnews.com
BEIJING —
This investment turned out to be as risky as it was risque.
A sex theme park that featured explicit exhibits of genitalia and sexual culture is being demolished before it can even open, a government spokesman in southwestern China said.
The park, christened “Love Land” by its owners, went under the wrecking ball over the weekend in the city of Chongqing, said the spokesman, who like many Chinese bureaucrats would give only his surname, Yang.
Yang refused to give the reason for the demolition or other details. However, photographs of the adult-only park had circulated widely on the Internet over the weekend, prompting widespread mockery and condemnation.
Exhibits had included giant-sized reproductions of male and female anatomy, dissertations on how the topic of sex is treated in various cultures and what the official China Daily newspaper called “sex technique workshops.”
The park’s main investor, Lu Xiaoqing, had earlier claimed that the attractions sought only to boost sexual awareness and improve people’s sex-lives.
The demolition highlights conflicted views on sex in modern China, where a prudish attitude toward discussion of sexuality is paired with an almost clinical approach to its physical aspects.
While pornography is banned and sex education largely unheard of, shops selling sex toys and related items stand out prominently in many neighborhoods and sex outside marriage is widely tolerated. Prostitution, while technically illegal, is widespread, and the keeping of mistresses among prominent businessmen and Communist Party officials is considered commonplace.
Such attitudes are blamed in part for risky sex and ignorance about birth control among minors. With public discussion of sex so limited, there is relatively little awareness of sexual harassment and abuse and laws and regulations covering such matters are weaker in China than in many countries.
Newspapers last week carried prominent reports on a government official who was let off with a fine simply because he said he had not known that the 13-year-old girl he paid to have sex with was underage.
The man, Lu Yumin, a local tax bureau official in Sichuan province’s Yibin county, was arrested on charges of child rape, but was convicted only of visiting a prostitute and fined $730.
The World Health Organization has raised the alert level to 5 which is basically a declaration that a pandemic is imminent. 159 people have already been reported to have died from th Mexican Flu in Mexico, which is where the virus supposedly originated.
A 22 month old baby died in a Houston area hospital today. The baby was in Houston after being in Mexico City. Some people are wondering if the US government has not acted swiftly enough to contain the virus, and if it is too late to close the Mexican borders to contain the virus.
Egypt has ordered the killing of ALL of the pigs that are in the country. This is an interesting move, considering that the virus is not spread from pigs.
30 Marines in California were quarantined after one of their associates was diagnosed with the Mexican flu.
Current reports are putting the incubation period of the Mexican flu at four or five days. The incubation period for children can be as long as 10 days. It is during this time that the body is fighting the virus.
In an AP news article titled, “in flu crisis, US has planned for the worse” here, the authors go on to write “The worst case scenario, according to U.S. government planners: Two million dead. Hospitals overwhelmed. Schools closed. Swaths of empty seats at baseball stadiums and houses of worship. An economic recovery snuffed out.”
They also go on to say, “If a pandemic strikes, the government estimates that nearly 10 million patients would have to be admitted to the hospital, and nearly 1.5 million would need intensive care. About 750,000 would need the help of mechanical ventilators to keep breathing. No one would be immune from the consequences, even those who don’t get sick, according to worst-case exercises run by local and national agencies.”
This is a huge varying difference from what government officials have been saying regarding this near pandemic. Government officials are still downplaying the significance of it all, while not taking the same preventative measures that other countries which are oceans away have taken.
The BBC has a section on their website titled “Swine Flu: Your Experiences”, which could be perhaps one of the best ways for us common people to get a feel for what is really happening. Below are some of the comments on the page:
From Doctor Antonio Chavez,
There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes and there is great sadness among health professionals here.
Scientists say that the Mexican Flu vaccine is months away. One question that we have is, if they get a working vaccine, is it effective if the virus mutates?
China Forces Dozens of Mexican Travelers Into Quarantine
By ANDREW BROWNE
BEIJING — The A/H1N1 flu outbreak is leading to a potential diplomatic row between China and Mexico, as Chinese health authorities round up and quarantine scores of Mexicans — only one of whom is thus far reported to be sick — as they fly in on business and holiday trips.
Mexico’s foreign minister said Mexican citizens with no signs of infection had been isolated in “unacceptable conditions” in China. Patricia Espinosa told a news conference Saturday that such measures were “discriminatory and ungrounded” and that the government is advising Mexicans to stay away from China.
She also criticized four Latin American countries — Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Cuba — for suspending flights coming from Mexico against the recommendation of the World Health Organization.
![[China flu]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-DP392_chinaf_D_20090503194524.jpg)
AFP/Getty Images
A Chinese security guard watches as Mexican ambassador Jorge Guajardo waits to enter a sealed-off hotel where Mexican nationals are being held under quarantine in Beijing on May 3.
More than 70 Mexicans are in isolation around China, according to Mexican officials, and that number is rising as Mexican travelers call in to their embassy to report their plight.
China has been rounding up all travelers aboard an AeroMéxico flight that arrived Thursday in Shanghai from Mexico with a 25-year-old Mexican man, who is now ill with human swine flu in Hong Kong. He is the only known Mexican sufferer in China to date. However, Mexicans on other flights say they have been singled out for harsh treatment.
Gustavo Carrillo, a 36-year-old manager of a Mexican technology company in China who lives in Beijing, was taken off his Continental Airlines plane Saturday and rushed into quarantine at a Beijing hotel. He had traveled to the U.S. from China on a business trip and hadn’t visited Mexico.
Mr. Carrillo said health officials took the temperatures of other passengers after the plane landed, but didn’t check his after they saw his Mexican passport. Instead, they led him down the aisle past gawking passengers. “It was embarrassing and humiliating,” he said.
Mexicans who were on the flight to Shanghai with the 25-year-old flu victim complain about how China has enforced its quarantine, offering little information and only basic medical testing. Among them is a family of five, including three young children, who transited to Beijing. They were roused from their hotel room in the Chinese capital in the early hours of Saturday and whisked to an infectious diseases hospital. There, according to the father, Carlos Doormann, AeroMéxico’s finance director, they were isolated in a room with bloodstained sheets and what appeared to be mucus smeared on the walls.
“I’m frustrated and sad,” said Mr. Doormann, whose family has since been moved to the nearby Guo Men Hotel on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, where they are in quarantine along with five other Mexican nationals, including Mr. Carrillo.
According to accounts from Mexicans in the hotel, Mexican travelers arriving on various flights from Mexico and the U.S. were singled out by health officials who boarded the aircraft wearing white protective suits, masks and rubber gloves. They led away Mexican passport holders. Several travelers said Chinese television camera crews surprised them at the doors of their aircraft as they emerged. They said the filming continued through the windows of an isolation ward at the Beijing Ditan infectious diseases hospital.
“We felt like we were in a zoo,” said Angel Yamil Silum, a 27-year-old business student, who arrived in Beijing with his girlfriend Saturday en route to Bangkok for a holiday, and ended up at Ditan and then the Guo Men Hotel.
Chinese authorities allowed Mexico’s ambassador to China, Jorge Guajardo, to enter the hotel on Sunday but refused him permission to see the quarantined Mexicans or to call up to their rooms, Mexican officials said. The embassy is shuttling soft drinks, pizzas and other Western food to the hotel along with CDs, toys for the children and other entertainment.
Hong Kong also has moved aggressively on quarantines. The Hong Kong government said no new cases of A/H1N1 flu have been found since the discovery of the 25-year-old Mexican traveler. The Hong Kong government’s approach has won plaudits within the territory, where memories linger of the confusion caused by an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003. Peter Cordingley, a spokesman for the WHO’s Western Pacific office in Manila, Philippines, said that although the WHO didn’t have a policy specifically on the kind of quarantine used in Hong Kong, “in general we support any legal measures that reduce the risk of community transmission.”
Chinese officials deny that Mexicans are being unfairly targeted. “There is no discrimination at all,” said Zhang Jianshu, head of the news office at the Beijing Health Bureau. “We treat all people the same,” he said, adding that there are many Chinese passengers in isolation.
A WHO spokesman said the agency has said that different countries can have different approaches based on their own risk assessment.
China’s government was widely blamed for a slow and ineffective initial response to SARS in 2003 and appears eager to demonstrate to the Chinese public that it is taking the threat more seriously this time.
The Mexican guests at the Guo Men Hotel have had no contact with Chinese officials, except health workers, and have no idea how long they will have to stay. “We’re held hostage here,” said Mr. Doormann. Twice each day, nurses leave thermometers outside their rooms. No other medical testing is carried out.
Myrna Elisa Berlanga Morales, a 31-year-old administrative assistant from Mexico City, arrived in Beijing on the Continental flight on Saturday with two American friends. She asked why Chinese consular officials in Mexico issued her and other Mexicans visas when they were heading straight into quarantine in China. “They could have warned me,” she said.
Her friends had told her that her holiday in China “would be the most unforgettable 15 days of my life.” She added: “Now I believe them.”
Europeans: U.S. Should Give Up Control of Internet
STRASBOURG, France —
The United States has too much control over the Internet and needs to give it up, a European Union bureaucrat declared Monday.
EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding, a Luxembourgian, called for “full privatization” of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), demanding that it be removed from the supervision of the U.S. Department of Commerce when its operating agreement expires on Sept. 30.
“In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an Internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world,” said Reding in a statement.
She purports to be calling for less, not more, government involvement in the Internet, using a free-market argument against the Commerce Department’s control of ICANN.
Longtime Euroskeptics may be surprised by that approach, as the European Commission normally sees fit to issue binding regulations governing all aspects of public life on all member states, right down to the sizes of apples and oranges in street markets.
ICANN is a non-profit organization based in Marina del Rey, Calif., which among other tasks supervises the top-level domains of the Internet, such as “.com” and “.net,” as well as country-code domains such as “.fr” and “.uk.”
The U.S. military and defense-research labs at universities across the country built the Internet in the 1970s, and ever since then it’s essentially been controlled by the U.S. government.
This has upset other countries’ governments. In 2005, a U.N. body tried to persuade the U.S. to hand over control, arguing that no one nation should run such a vital means of communication.
The U.S. successfully quashed that attempt, partly by pointing out that it’s been a very hands-off landlord and mostly lets ICANN do whatever it wants.
One exception to that trend involved ICANN’s proposed “.xxx” domain for pornographic Web sites, which would have kept online porn in its own sector.
Pressure from American politicians killed the idea two years ago, causing consternation among their less prudish European counterparts.
Yet Reding may have undermined her own free-market argument by simultaneously proposing a new international body, a “G12 for Internet Governance” that would oversee ICANN and be made up of voting representatives from around the world.
Like the 2005 plan, that would essentially be handing over Internet control not to the free market, but to the same creaky collection of international bureaucrats who control the EU and the U.N. — which might mean a lot more government involvement in day-to-day Internet operations.
The European Commission plans to hold a series of public hearings on the issue beginning Wednesday in Brussels.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Fiat in talks over GM Europe move
Italian carmaker Fiat has begun efforts to win support for its plan to take over General Motors’ European business, which includes Vauxhall and Opel.
After meeting Fiat’s chief executive, Germany’s economy minister said the Italians wanted to take over Opel, but without running up any debt.
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg also said Fiat had pledged to keep the three main German factories if its bid went ahead.
GM is under pressure to sell its European interests as it restructures.
Fears for Vauxhall
GM Europe confirmed that it was in talks with “several possible investors” some of who showed “good and realistic interest”.
Saab is also part of GM Europe, but may not be part of any discussions as it is being reorganised under Swedish law.
Fiat is already trying to take over some of Chrysler, the US carmaker that has applied for bankruptcy protection.
Professor David Bailey, from Coventry University’s Business School, warned that any deal could cost the jobs of UK car workers.
And Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, the UK’s main carworkers’ union, said: “This move sends shivers down my spine.”
Meanwhile, on Monday evening Canadian car parts supplier Magna International said it was also in talks with GM and German government officials about possibly taking a minority stake in Opel.
‘Consolidation needed’
Earlier, German economy minister Mr zu Guttenberg had said, after meeting Fiat Group chief executive Sergio Marchionne, that any deal would need short-term financing across Europe by the Italian carmaker of about 5-7bn euros ($6.6-9.3bn; £4.45-6.24bn).
The economy minister described Fiat’s plans for Opel – which he said called for “a certain need for consolidation” – as “interesting”, but said the German government would need to take time before reaching any conclusions.
Mr Marchionne is also to hold talks with the head of the Opel works council to assess the viability of a deal.
But German union official Armin Schild, who sits on Opel’s supervisory board, was sceptical about whether Fiat would be an effective investor.
“I can’t say if Mr Marchionne is able to save Opel, but I know that Opel and Fiat are direct competitors, producing the same types of cars for the same market, so the merger of both companies could offer little to each other and take away a lot,” he said.
Job risk?
Opel employs nearly 26,000 in Germany, while Vauxhall employs about 5,000 people in the UK.
And the UK’s Unite union said it opposed Vauxhall being taken over by Fiat – claiming it would be an “unmitigated disaster” that would cost jobs.
Professor Garel Rhys from the Cardiff Business School agreed that British jobs could be lost if the deal went ahead.
“General Motors has indicated they have three plants too many and those three plants too many are actually in Germany, or run by the Germans”, he said.
“It could be that Fiat, knowing that the company is too big, would balk at taking on the Germans and might look for the softer option of closing a plant in the UK.”
GM faces potential bankruptcy in the US and has until 1 June to restructure.
Opel has said it needs 3.3bn euros (£2.9bn; $4.3bn) to get through the economic crisis, but the German government has encouraged it to find an investor.
It has said it does not intend offering Opel a bail-out, but that it would offer investors state support.
Mr de Montezemolo told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper on Sunday that a Fiat takeover of Opel would create “a very strong group”
However Canadian car parts maker Magna International has also put forward what the German government has called a “rough concept for a commitment with Opel”.
There has been some doubt about whether Fiat could cope with such growth.
“They’re going to be a global powerhouse, I guess. Who would have thought?” said Erich Merkle, an independent auto industry analyst in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“It’ll make them a very large automaker, but we’ve seen that large isn’t necessarily indicative of success.”
Five years ago, GM paid $2bn to avoid having to take up an option to buy Fiat’s carmaking business.
GM challenge
Erich Merkle, car industry analyst
Last week GM said it was to cut 21,000 US jobs in 2009 and phase out its Pontiac brand, as it aims to meet the deadline set by the US government to overhaul its business and show that it is viable.
It has said a number of potential buyers had expressed interest in its Saturn brand in the US, and that it was proceeding to the next step in selling it.
Like US rivals Ford and Chrysler, GM has seen sales fall sharply in its core home market in recent years, a decline that has intensified as the recession has continued.
Meanwhile in the US, a court hearing into Chrysler’s request for a speedy sale to Fiat was adjourned by Judge Arthur Gonzalez until Tuesday.
The shoemaker and the hat-maker are neighbours who do not see eye to eye.
The hat-maker believes in producing few hats and looking for the maximum profit on each, protected by tariff.
The shoemaker aims to keep down the cost of his shoes through mass production and make money through free trade and exporting them.
It might be a tale for our times as the global economic crisis bites ever more deeply and protectionism rears its head.
But The Shoemaker and the Hatter was an animated film made in Britain in 1950. It became one of the most popular of the films made to help promote what was known as the Marshall Plan, the post-World War II project for European recovery.
The films promoted European recovery after World War II
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Now, a number of the Marshall Plan films have been shown to audiences at the Barbican Centre in London as interested archivists bring a cross-section of the films together as “Selling Democracy” to show them to contemporary audiences in the US and Europe.
Lost from view for more than five decades, the films went beyond underpinning the free market principles of the economic revival and reconstruction that was at the heart of the Marshall Plan.
They also sought to shore up democracy and counter totalitarianism of any kind.
Another British-made animated film, Without Fear, looks at Europe’s condition five years after the end of World War II and speculates about the divided continent’s future.
West Europeans are invited to consider whether they want the unity but not liberty of the East or want to put their efforts into creating a more prosperous and just society in the West.
A red tide washes over the whole of Europe to assist the decision-making.
Effective propaganda
The Marshall Plan was officially known as the European Recovery Programme and launched in the name of the then American Secretary of State, George Marshall, in 1947.
Some $13bn (£8.7bn) in economic and technical assistance was provided to participant countries over four years – the equivalent today of some $90bn (£60bn).
The Story of Koula shows how a local donkey helped a strong American mule
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Dr Rainer Rother, of the German Historical Museum-Kinemathek, says the approach to promoting the Marshall Plan appears to have been to “do good and speak about it”.
Public information initiatives were well-funded and the films were effective propaganda for “Western values”.
Of more than 250 films made, only a few were seen in the US due to a law preventing them being shown as Americans were not to be “propagandised” with their own tax money.
Sandra Schulberg is a film producer who describes herself as a child of the Marshall Plan. Her father, Stuart Schulberg, was one of the chiefs of the Marshall Plan Motion Picture Section.
‘Trojan horse’
She says that to see the films simply as “American propaganda” is to miss the point.
Most of them were the work of European filmmakers who were themselves living in the often miserable and challenging post-war conditions and they were given a great deal of freedom.
Sandra Schulberg sees them as films that became a model for the social welfare state and not, she says, “a Trojan horse for American capitalism”.
Now audiences in Britain are the latest to be able to come to their own conclusions about these historic films.
One of them, The Story of Koula, shows a big mule shipped from the US to Greece that does not take readily to working the land in its new home. A small Greek boy hitches a local donkey to the American mule to show him the ropes.
A witty metaphor for the limits to American power, even if Europe had cause to be grateful for the assistance given under the Marshall Plan
Miguel Angel Lezana, Mexico’s chief epidemiologist, was dicussing with reporters on Wednesday that he felt that the presence of Eurasian swine flu genes in the virus makes it unlikely that it originated in a Mexican pig farm. He also accused the World Health Organization of being slow to respond to the country’s warning about a health crisis that turned into a global Mexican flu scare.