WORLD NEWS:-Hamas Gives U.N. Response to Gaza War Crimes Report

BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The 11th Panchen Lama Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, one of the two most senior living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism, was elected vice president of the Buddhist Association of China Wednesday. The 11th Panchen Lama, 19, addressed the closing ceremony of the eighth national conference of the Buddhist Association of China, representing Tibetan Buddhism delegates, in both Tibetan and Chinese languages.
He said he would uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), adhere to socialism, safeguard national unification, strengthen ethnic unity and improve Buddhist exchanges, on the basis of adherence to the law and love for the nation and Buddhism.
He said he would actively participate in charity activities and "play a role in building a harmonious society."
He vowed to contribute to "the blueprint of the compatible development of Tibetan Buddhism and socialism."
"I will not let people down and will contribute to national unification, ethnic unity, promotion of Buddhist doctrine and world peace," he said.
Freedom of religious belief had been the CPC Central Committee's consistent religious policy, which must be firmly grasped, he said.
He suggested improving temple management, including "democratic management, institution building, cultural relics protection and economic management,"in accordance with the times and the socialist condition.
Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu was approved by the central government as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama in November 1995 after a lot-drawing ceremony among three candidates in the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa.
The conference elected Chuan Yin, who had headed the Beijing Buddhist Association, as president of the national association.
Also elected at the conference were the association's three honorary presidents, Pagbalha Geleg Namgyae, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Ben Huan, a 103-year-old Guangzhou-based renowned master, and Yi Cheng, former president of the national association.
The conference elected 25 vice presidents including the 11th Panchen Lama.
Qi Xiaofei, vice director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, said at the closing ceremony that Buddhism had been more and more accepted by the Chinese society.
Buddhist culture, as part of traditional Chinese culture, would "definitely play a unique and positive role in building a harmonious society," he said.
Nearly 600 delegates from China's religious circles attended the conference in Beijing from Monday to Wednesday.

The conference mapped out the association's development guideline over the next five years, deliberated a work report and amended its regulation.

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-Hamas Gives U.N. Response to Gaza War Crimes Report

GAZA (Reuters) - The Islamist group Hamas on Wednesday formally rejected allegations it had committed war crimes during last year's fighting in Gaza, charges made in a United Nations report.
Hamas officials said the group set out in a 52-page response handed to a U.N. official in Gaza that the killing of three Israeli civilians in rocket attacks during Israel's December 27, 2008-January 18, 2009 offensive was an accident and military installations had been targeted.
Up to 1,387 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and 13 Israelis, including three civilians, were killed in the war Israel launched with the declared aim of curbing rocket attacks on its territory.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch organisation, commenting last week after Hamas released a summary of the report, said the group's "claim that its rocket attacks against Israel are not war crimes is factually and legally wrong."
Human Rights Watch, which also has criticised Israeli conduct in the Gaza war, said "hundreds of rockets rained down on civilian areas in Israel where no military installations were located."
The Hamas report came in response to a U.N. mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone that found Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip committed war crimes.
The Goldstone report, issued in September, gave Israel and Hamas six months to mount credible investigations into their forces' conduct in the Gaza conflict or face possible war crimes prosecution in The Hague.
Israel has boycotted the U.N. investigation, calling the Goldstone report unbalanced and citing the difficulty of battling militants operating in heavily populated civilian areas.
But last Friday, Israel gave the U.N. a document detailing the Israeli military's own examinations of the Gaza offensive, disclosing it had launched 36 criminal investigations into the conduct of its forces.
The Israeli military also said that a general and a colonel had been reprimanded for authorising artillery shelling in a crowded neighbourhood in Gaza that hit a U.N. facility.
Amnesty International called the Israeli response "totally inadequate."
"The investigations undertaken by Israel fail to meet international standards of independence, impartiality, transparency, promptness and effectiveness," the London-based group said in a statement on its Web site

Read More

world news|Taliban attack repelled in Afghan city of Lashkar Gah

An attack by Taliban fighters in the southern Afghan city of Lashkar Gah has been repelled by government troops backed by Nato forces, officials say.
Taliban gunmen wearing suicide vests attacked a series of buildings in the capital of the southern Afghan province of Helmand exchanging fire with the Afghan army and NATO forces during an eight-hour shoot-out.
Six of the insurgents are reported to have died.
Martin Patience reports.

click hear for vid

Read More

world news|US supports concept of reintegration of Taliban

The Obama Administration today said it supports the concept of reintegration of the Taliban and welcomed Afghan President Hamid Karzai's plan of a grand peace 'jirga' in the coming months.
"We actually support and discussed yesterday during the Afghanistan conference the concept of reintegration, and we are very gratified that there has been a fund put together," Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P J Crowley said, adding that Japan has made a significant contribution to that.
"So this is fully consistent with our strategy of trying to build up capacity within the Afghan Government and provide it resources so that we can begin to peel away the foot soldiers who we think are not ideologically committed to this. It may well be something simple, like the Taliban for the moment is paying better than the Afghan Government," Crowley said.
Observing that the Taliban is a kind of mixed grouping of disparate elements, Crowley said the US thinks there can be an opportunity through a political process, one that is Afghan led, to try to see who among these leaders are willing to make a fundamental change in their approach.
"We will support this," he said.
Crowley welcomed the plan of Afghan President Hamid Karzai of a grand peace jirga in the coming months.

Read More

world news|Haiti's 'ghost' tent villages

It's midday in Port-au-Prince and the sun is beating down from a cloudless sky.
It's good news, another day without clouds means another day without rain.
But it won't last. Everybody knows the rainy season is now only a few weeks away, and a million people have no proper shelter.
A park on the edge of Port-au-Prince is sprouting what look like giant white field mushrooms. They are actually large white tents, hundreds of them.
It's the first proper tent encampment to be built since the earthquake. Along a high concrete wall workers are digging latrines, and building shower blocks.
In a few days from now 3,000 refugees from the centre of Port-au-Prince will start moving in here. But they will be the lucky few.
'Huge number'
Despite repeated calls from everyone - from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to Haitian President Rene Preval - only a few thousand tents have so far arrived in Haiti.

Mr Gascon says there are simply not enough tents

"The priority for flights has been given to bringing in food and medical supplies," says Christopher Gascon from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
He is in charge of building the mushroom tent camp. He has 40,000 more tents on their way from Panama, but by ship, not by air. And even when those do arrive, they will not be nearly enough.
It seems extraordinary, but so vast are Haiti's needs that there are simply not enough of the right sort of tents in the world right now to house all the refugees.
"We are talking about a huge number of tents," says Mr Gascon.
"These sort of tents are not widely available. They will have to be made, ordered from China. If you want 200,000 tents now its not going to happen, they are not there."
'Ghost' camp
There is also chaos and confusion. The aftermath of every natural disaster is chaotic. But Haiti is especially so.
Every aid agency and non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the world seems to have poured in to Port-au-Prince.
In the UN compound next to the airport clean-cut young men and women strut around in T-shirts proclaiming "Scientologist Volunteers".

Reconstruction: Haitian style

In a bar across the street a group of Belgian men are drinking beer. Outside their large white lorry has a banner draped across it with the name of their own tiny environmental NGO.
"We want to help, but the World Food Programme says they already have enough water trucks," they tell me.
But if the UN base is chaotic, it's nothing to the Haitian government compound.
It's housed in an old concrete police station just down the road. The car park is crammed with large four-wheel drives jostling for position and hooting loudly.
We manage to track down Charles Clairmonte, the Haitian official charged with building the mass tent cities that will supposedly house the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Port-au-Prince.
"We started work the day after the earthquake," he assures me, "the first camp will be up and running within the next few days."
Surprised, I ask him where it is.
"It is on the outskirts of the city, there is running water and there will be electricity and spaces, it will be operational within a few days," Mr Clairmonte says.
Intrigued, I take down the details of the location and head out of town.
The place is an empty stretch of highway that runs out to the mountains north of Port-au-Prince.
One thing is immediately clear, there is no camp. Instead on a stony hillside we come across one of the most extraordinary sites I have ever seen. Hundreds and hundreds of people, camping in the open.
'No help'
As soon as I get out of the car a crowd surrounds me. One young man speaks English.
I ask him where he sleeps.
"On the ground," he answers, pointing to a patch of dirt further up the hill.
I ask him if he has had any help, any food or water.
"No," he says, "we have nothing."
Further on I find a young mother and her seven children squatting in a tiny shack they have fashioned out of sticks and old blankets. One of her children has a huge bandage around his hand.
"He had two fingers amputated after the quake," the mother says.
Nearby Salnar Devoisie is lying on a makeshift bed.
Her daughter is platting her mass of grey hair. There is a white bandage around the stump of her left leg.
"I was trapped in the rubble of my home for three days. When the Israeli doctors got me out they said we will have to chop it off or you will die," she says.
As we talk she rubs her hand against her chest as if in pain.
"It is gas. I haven't eaten for four days."
Despite the massive response from the outside world these people are still waiting for help to arrive.
And for nearly a million Haitians the coming night will be another night spent in the open.

Read More

world news:Seoul shares hit 7-week closing low; LG Elec down

KOSPI down for a fourth session

Financials

* N.Korea reports briefly shake markets
* LG Elec falls despite solid Q4 results, cautious outook
(Updates to close)
By Jungyoun Park
SEOUL, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Seoul shares posted their lowest close in seven weeks on Wednesday, with sentiment pressured by reports North and South Korea had exchanged artillery fire, and LG Elec (066570.KS) falling despite solid quarterly global profit figures.
Investors were briefly disturbed by news that South Korea had returned fire after North Korea shot several artillery rounds into waters near a disputed sea border with the South, but markets quickly trimmed earlier losses.[ID:nTOE60Q01B]
"Market sentiment was momentarily shaken by the North Korea reports, as they came when shares was already pressured with continuing worries about China's monetary tightening moves and signals of U.S. curbs on banks," said Hwang Chang-joong, head of investment strategy at Woori Investment & Securities.
"But the North Korea factor is, as usual, a short-term negative. Today's events were relatively benign compared to say, a missile launch," said Hwang added.
The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) finished down 0.72 percent to 1,625.48 points, the lowest close since December 4, 2009 and below its 120-day moving average near 1,630 points.
Shares in LG Electronics (066570.KS) fell 1.85 percent to 106,000 won despite posting the firm posting a higher-than-expected quarterly operating profit as strong flat-screen TV sales offset sluggish earnings from mobile phones.[ID:nSEF000047]
"The figures came out better than the market consensus but mainly due to its TV business rather than its handset unit," said Yoo Jong-woo, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities.
"Worries about its phone business, particularly its smartphone business, persist, and I do not see that changing unless LG Electronics unrolls a more attractive smartphone lineup," Yoo added.
Other technology exporters also declined as market sentiment continued to weaken.
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), the world's No. 1 memory chip maker, fell 1.84 percent, and Hynix Semiconductor (000660.KS), the world's No. 2, declined 1.48 percent.
Shares in KB Financial Group (105560.KS) (KB.N) fell to a six -month low on concerns that the government might be exerting a greater influence over its day-to-day management.
The worries were sparked after the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported on Wednesday that more than four non-executive board members at KB Financial, the parent firm of top domestic bank Kookmin, were expected to step down, citing an unnamed KB senior official.
The report came after South Korea announced a plan on Monday to tighten rules on non-executive boards of banks. [ID:nTOE60O02K]
KB Financial spokesman Kim Tae-hyun said it had not been informed of the board members' resignations.
An analyst at a domestic brokerage said the report fuelled speculation that the government could step up intervention in the banking group, which could be seen as a risk to investors.
Shares in KB lost 4.15 percent to 49,650 won, the lowest close since mid-July, 2009.

Read More

world news:Smallest Survivors Pose One of Biggest Problems

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- The smallest survivors of Haiti's catastrophic earthquake are growing into one of the biggest problems in its aftermath.
Many of the countless thousands of children scattered among Port-au-Prince's makeshift camps of homeless have nobody to care for them, aid workers say, leaving them without protection against disease, child predators and other risks.
''They are extremely vulnerable,'' said Kate Conradt, a spokeswoman for the aid group Save the Children.
She said U.N. experts estimate there may be 1 million unaccompanied or orphaned children or youngsters who lost at least one parent in the Jan. 12 quake.
Some young Haitians are even being released from hospitals with no one to care for them -- there just aren't enough beds for them.
''Health workers are being advised to monitor and send separated/unaccompanied children to child-friendly spaces,'' the U.N. humanitarian office said in its latest situation report.
The U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, along with Save the Children and the Red Cross, has begun registering at-risk children and has identified three interim care centers at orphanages where they can be temporarily sheltered, said Bo Viktor Nylund, a senior UNICEF adviser for child protection.
The Connecticut-based Save the Children, meanwhile, has set up ''Child Spaces'' in 13 makeshift settlements. And the three agencies are working to reunite families, by creating a joint database of separated family members.
''This is just the begining of the exercise,'' Nylund said. ''Considering the number of people who died in the earthquake, we are expecting children in the thousands who have lost their parents.''
The plight of the young is especially poignant even in a country where the U.N. estimates one-third of the 9 million people need international assistance.
The needs are evident in Port-au-Prince's streets, alleys and crumbled doorways, where handwritten messages beg for help. In the Juvenat neighborhood, a group of 50 families scrawled in green on a white sheet hung from a doorway: ''We need food assistance, water and medicine.''
It was evident Tuesday, too, among thousands of people pressing against the gates of a food-distribution site in the Cite Soleil slum, where Haitian police swung sticks to beat back the crowd.
Near the quake-devastated National Palace, Brazilian troops in the U.N. peacekeeping mission occasionally fired pepper spray or pointed their guns at people to control a tightly packed, jostling line of Haitians waiting for food.
Thomas Louis, 40, who was trying to get rice and oil for his two babies, said Haitians appreciated the foreign help, but he complained about the lack of organization. ''This is anarchy. This is not aid. This is a way to put people down.''
The monumental scale of the Haiti disaster -- perhaps 200,000 dead, a capital city on its knees -- has severely strained the world's ability to get relief supplies through Port-au-Prince's overloaded airport and crippled seaport.
Some 800 to 1,000 aid flights were still awaiting permission to land, a seven-day backlog, U.N. and European officials said Tuesday. John Holmes, U.N. humanitarian coordinator, estimated 2 million people need food, but only 500,000 have received some so far.
The medical picture has improved, but remains critical. World Health Organization spokesman Paul Garwood said more medical staff were needed, especially rehabilitation specialists, to help with postoperative recovery of 200,000 people who have had amputations or other surgery.
Haitian and volunteer staff from dozens of countries work around the clock. In some hospitals, they are still performing up to 100 amputations a day.
At Port-au-Prince's General Hospital, Haitian-born pediatrician Winston Price, a volunteer from New York, was caring for some 80 children in four tents on the hospital grounds. A handful had been brought in with no clues to their families. Price could only wonder.
''Maybe some of these parents are not even looking because their house was destroyed and they might think the kid was inside,'' he said. ''But maybe the kid was pulled out, so they are missing each other.''
Children left alone are everywhere. At one of the 13 Save the Children sites, about 25 children have no adult relatives taking care of them, Conradt said. She said the group has helped some 6,000 children since the quake.
The aid group's ''Child Spaces'' are cordoned-off areas where children can play under supervision, ''run around being children, giving them a chance to return to normalcy as much as they can,'' she said.
Such areas also protect children against the potential for abduction by child traffickers, a chronic problem in pre-quake Haiti, where thousands were handed over to other families into lives of domestic servitude, said Deb Barry, an emergency protection adviser with Save the Children.
She said her organization is working to track down every rumor it hears about threats to stranded children, ''but we haven't been able to verify those thus far.''
In Geneva, a UNICEF spokeswoman, Veronique Taveau, said the organization had been told of children disappearing from hospitals. ''It's difficult to establish the reality,'' she said, but added that UNICEF has strengthened security at hospitals and orphanages.
Government spokeswoman Marie Laurence Jocelyn-Lassegue, the communications minister, said Tuesday that Haitian officials have temporarily halted new adoptions because of concerns about corruption and carelessness in the system.
''Some children we don't know if the parents are alive or not,'' Jocelyn-Lassegue said.
------
Associated Press writers contributing to this story included Michelle Faul and Jonathan M. Katz in Port-au-Prince, and Frank Jordans in Geneva.

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-President Obama Praised for Sticking to American Values on Counter-Terrorism

As President Obama completes his first year in office, security experts give him high marks for sticking to American values and trying to win the hearts of Muslims while taking steps to avert terrorist attacks. But they also say the U.S. must not wait to fix a weakness until after it is exposed by an attack.

"While passions and politics can often obscure the hard work before us, let's be clear about what this moment demands, we are at war," President Obama said.

And that war is against the kind of terrorism that authorities say a Nigerian man attempted when he allegedly tried to bomb a US airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day [December 25]. President Obama promised to use "every element of national power" to keep Americans safe.

Some security experts say that President Obama avoids comparing the war on terrorism to conventional war between nations, but he has taken several steps to contain the threat.

Clark Irwin is with the Aspen Institute:

"People don't realize that President Obama has really intensified the effort to go after al-Qaida central in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The drone strikes have really intensified under his tenure. He famously, after much deliberation, is increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan," Irwin said.

President Obama is doing something that his predecessor did not do, says Irwin.

"The struggle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim community here in the U.S. and around the world," Irwin said.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney accuses Mr. Obama of pretending not to be at war with terrorist organizations. But Jacob Shapiro at Princeton University says the use of the word "war" actually helps the terror groups.

"It plays into the narrative that they are trying to construct for the population they are appealing to of this ragged band of brave individuals fighting the mighty power that is oppressing their society. And it also helps their efforts to create fear and anxiety in our population," Shapiro said.

Paul Pillar at Georgetown University says if it is not war, then the Obama administration needs to spell out the exact nature of the struggle. The former CIA veteran says there should be an open debate about what price Americans are willing to pay for security against terrorism.

"It might be privacy, it might be personal liberty, it might be the convenience of the traveling public. It might be monetary cost, it might be cost in blood and treasure for military operations overseas, as in Afghanistan," Pillar said.

Michael German of the American Civil Liberities Union says the American public does not fully understand what is at stake in the war against terrorism.

"I think that is something that this administration needs to address immediately, and it is already a year behind," German said.

But he says the Obama administration should get credit for not giving up on American values while fighting against terrorists.

"Our policies and procedures do express American values - tolerance, transparency, respect for rule of law and due process. Those things will ultimately keep us stronger and protect us better than any sort of effort to stomp out who we perceive as the bad guys," German said.

Clark Irwin at the Aspen Institute agrees. But he says the recent failed airplane bomb attack makes clear Mr. Obama's administration must do more to combat terrorism.  Security officials have to anticipate the next attack.

"One of the things we need to start doing is to get ahead of the curve by trying to anticipate additional methods that can be used against us and closing the gaps before those gaps are exploited," Irwin said.

Security experts agree that given the number of targets and the infinite ways they can be exploited, security can never be 100 percent.  But they say that does not mean the Obama administration can lower its guard and stop working toward achieving that.

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-Nigeria religious riots 'kill 200' in Jos

At least 200 people have been killed in violence between Christians and Muslims in the Nigerian city of Jos, says the monitoring group, Human Rights Watch.

Troops ordered by Nigeria's vice-president to help police restore order have arrived and are patrolling the streets, enforcing a 24-hour curfew.
The fighting, which broke out on Sunday, has prompted thousands of people to flee the city.
Houses, mosques and churches have been burnt down and many people arrested.
It is believed to be the first time Goodluck Jonathan has used executive powers since President Umaru Yar'Adua left Nigeria for hospital treatment in Saudi Arabia in November.
Lt Col Shekari Galadima, a spokesman for the 3rd Division of the Nigerian Army, told the BBC's Network Africa programme the streets were calm and the troops in control of the situation.
The area has seen several bouts of deadly violence in recent years.
At least 200 people were killed in an outbreak of fighting between Muslims and Christians in 2008, while some 1,000 died in a riot in 2001.
Violence spreading
The current violence has forced at least 3,000 people from their homes.
On Tuesday the violence spread beyond the city boundaries to The death toll has not been verified independently and it is not known how many Christians have died.
Human Rights Watch say at least 200 have died in the latest outbreak of violence.
Balarabe Dawud, head of the Central Mosque in Jos, told AFP news agency he had counted 192 bodies since Sunday.
Muhammad Tanko Shittu, a mosque worker who was helping to prepare mass burials, told Reuters he had counted 149 bodies.
Jos is in Nigeria's volatile Middle Belt - between the mainly Muslim north and the south where the majority is Christian or follow traditional religions.
Correspondents say such clashes in Nigeria are often blamed on sectarianism.
However, poverty and access to resources such as land often lie at the root of the violence.
It is unclear what the trigger was for the latest bout of violence.
Plateau State spokesman Dan Manjang told Network Africa there were reports that it may have started after a football match.
But he said it would be surprising if football was the reason.
Reuters quoted residents as saying the violence started after an argument over the rebuilding of homes destroyed in the 2008 clashes.

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-Iran says its "nuclear rights" must be recognized

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Major powers will only achieve results in their meetings on Iran if they adopt a "realistic approach" and recognize its nuclear rights, the Islamic Republic's Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Sunday.Ramin Mehmanparast made the comment a day after the six powers met to discuss prospects of further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, with participants saying China made clear it opposed more punitive action at the moment.
Iran's official IRNA news agency said Mehmanparast described the powers' failure to reach an agreement on Iran's nuclear issue as natural.
Diplomats from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China held a three-hour meeting in New York on Saturday.
It came after Iran ignored U.S. President Barack Obama's Dec 31, 2009, deadline to respond to an offer from the six powers of economic and political incentives in exchange for halting its nuclear enrichment activities.
"The solution lies in the recognition of Iran's nuclear rights by the group," Mehmanparast said. "The planned meetings of the (six powers) would not have clear results as long as they lack a realistic approach."
Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of its civilian atomic program. Iran, the world's fifth-largest crude exporter, says its program is designed to generate electricity.
The European Union, which hosted the meeting at its New York office, said that despite the lack of a concrete outcome, further sanctions were now on the big-power agenda and the six would be in contact again soon to continue the discussions.
All the powers except China sent top level Foreign Ministry officials to Saturday's meeting. But Beijing, which said earlier this month that it was not the right time for new sanctions, sent only a mid-ranking diplomat from its U.N. mission.
China's virtual snub of the meeting dismayed the four Western powers in the group. They had hoped to reach an agreement on whether to begin drafting a new U.N. Security Council resolution on a fourth round of sanctions against Iran.
Three previous rounds of U.N. sanctions have targeted Iran's nuclear and missile industries, but Iran has shrugged them off and said it plans to pursue its right to enrich uranium, which can have both civilian and military uses.
The Western powers had originally hoped to sanction Iran's energy sector but dropped the idea months ago when it became clear Russia and China would never accept it.

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-Haiti earthquake: a few more rescues, but aid still slow

British rescue workers freed two more earthquake victims from the rubble in Port-au-Prince today as disorder grows on the streets of the Haitian capital and aid sits undistributed.
A rescue team from Rapid UK used hammers and chisels as they spent six hours digging a 39-year-old woman out from under the ruins of her collapsed home.
Dan Cooke, a Wiltshire firefighter, said: “There was a woman under three or four floors of concrete squashed in with dead members of her family. That was a hammer and chisel job and it took six hours before the doctor assigned to our team took her to hospital.”
Meanwhile rescuers from Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) said today that they had reached a man after seven hours of tunnelling. He had been thrown out of his bed by the earthquake and ended up underneath it, which protected him and helped him to survive. After being rehydrated he recovered well and was treated for minor injuries.
Mr Cooke said his team rescued two people yesterday and two the day before. “It is more than we would usually come across," he said. "The people are very tough as a nation and the weather conditions help to keep people alive but as the days go on the chances of people surviving fall massively.”
The 64-strong search and rescue contingent from Britain is among 47 teams working across the capital in dangerous conditions. There have been many scenes of lawlessness as looters ransack shops and stores. In at least one case, angry Haitians have taken the law into their own hands and lynched a suspected looter, dragging his body through the streets with a rope lashed around his feet.
Mr Cooke said: “You hear gunfire, you see gangs of youths carrying machetes but to some extent that is part of the culture here.
“We are doing quite well. The UN security forces are attaching themselves to us and some teams have brought their own armed security.
“The conditions yesterday were very hot and dusty. There is always a smell of the dead and sometimes it is extremely potent. There are some very horrific scenes.”
Britain’s Ambassador to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Steven Fisher, said that security problems in Port-au-Prince were hampering the relief effort as people awaiting aid grew frustrated.
He told the BBC: “Nobody can go anywhere without security in the city. No aid workers can go anywhere without taking risks with security. That adds to the difficulty of delivering the aid because you not only have to have transport – which is rare – you also have to have some sort of security with you, or you are taking a risk. People are getting angry, people are getting hungry and thirsty.”
The Department for International Development (DfID) said £2 million of the £6 million in aid pledged by the UK Government would be spent on providing logistical support and communications to help speed up the distribution of supplies.
But a “reliable pipeline” is still lacking to get aid through to the people of Haiti, the chief executive of the British Red Cross said today.
Sir Nicholas Young told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 that the British people had supported the fundraising campaign “incredibly generously” but that had to be backed up by organisation on the ground in the shattered island.
He said: “The need is to get the aid out from the airport to the people and to get it out in an orderly way that makes sure those most in need get it.
“A measure of law and order on the streets is absolutely vital. These are desperate people in desperate circumstances and the sooner we get a reliable pipeline of aid out to them the better.”
Aftershocks measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale hit Haiti yesterday as rescue teams continued their desperate search for possible survivors trapped in rubble and pulled more bodies out.
Hopes of finding a missing British woman alive were fading after the bodies of her bosses were found among the rubble of the United Nation’s headquarters.
Relatives of Ann Barnes, 59, a UN worker, said that they feared the worst as she has been unaccounted for since the earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday.
A Foreign Office spokesman said it was in contact with Ms Barnes’s family but had no confirmed reports of British casualties.
The UN said the bodies of its Haiti mission chief, Hedi Annabi, his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa and Doug Coates, the acting UN police commissioner, were recovered from the collapsed building.
Cash continued to pour into the Haiti Earthquake Appeal, with people across the UK donating £10 million in just 24 hours.
Gordon Brown praised the generosity of British people and added thatr the tragedy was “a summons to action for every continent”.
Charities and aid agencies battled to get emergency supplies to the stricken island and planes that usually carry holidaymakers were pressed into service to carry vital supplies.
Seats were stripped out of economy class to make way for cargo, including containers of water, purification equipment and pumps.
René Préval, the Haitian President, implored the international community to better co-ordinate the massive aid effort for his country and not to squabble over how to provide it.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said that there were still no official estimates of the death toll and that unofficial figures of 100,000 may be too low.
Mrs Clinton, who arrived in the devastated capital Port-au-Prince aboard a US Coast Guard plane last night, held talks with US officials organising the relief operation and with Mr Préval.
"We are here at the invitation of your government to help you," she told a press conference.
"As President Obama has said, we will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead. I know the resilience and strength of the Haitian people. You have been severely tested. But I believe that Haiti can come back stronger and better in the future."
Mr Preval, who said he had just visited a man pulled out of the rubble alive after four days by American rescuers, said Mrs Clinton's visit "warmed our hearts." The two countries were to unveil a statement later today about how they planned to cooperate together.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, is also expected to arrive in Haiti today. Mr Ban will assess the Caribbean nation's needs in the wake of Tuesday's devastating earthquake and attempt to boost the shattered morale of the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, after the worst disaster in the world body's history dealt a crippling blow to the 12,000-strong mission there.
He said that his one-day visit aimed "to show his solidarity with the people of Haiti and UN staff" and to "assess the humanitarian assistance effort and the scale of the disaster for himself."
With food, water and US troops flowing to Haiti, international donors were struggling to push supplies through a clogged airport to stricken earthquake survivors.
Relief workers warned unless supplies were quickly delivered, Port-au-Prince would degenerate into lawlessness.
Mr Preval admitted it was “an extremely difficult situation”, but he stressed people must keep their cool and not “throw accusations at each other”.

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-FBI angers politician whose image was used to show older Bin Laden

FBI angers politician whose image was used to show older Bin Laden

Madrid, Spain (CNN) -- The FBI used a photograph of a Spanish lawmaker as part of a digitally enhanced Osama bin Laden wanted poster, and the U.S. Embassy here has apologized to the angry politician, a spokesman said.
"That was not normal procedure. It was completely unintentional and the FBI is looking into it to prevent it from happening again," U.S. Embassy spokesman Will Ostick told CNN on Saturday.
Ostick said he called the leftist politician, Gaspar Llamazares, to "express regret" on behalf of the embassy after the lawmaker's hair and forehead wrinkles, taken from a photo, were mixed into an FBI image showing the possible appearance of Bin Laden now.
The embassy received various calls from the Spanish government earlier Saturday expressing concern about the use of Llamazares's features in the FBI's depiction, Ostick said.
Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba is meeting the new American ambassador to Madrid, Alan Solomont, on Monday, the ministry announced Sunday.
The ministry did not say what they would be talking about, but the meeting appears to have been scheduled at short notice and is taking place on a U.S. federal holiday when the embassy is not expected to be open.
The digitally enhanced images of Bin Laden appeared Friday on the U.S. government's Rewards for Justice Web site. One depicts how an aging Bin Laden might look now, wearing his usual turban.
But the other one, depicting him without the head covering, showed the hair and facial wrinkles that were taken from a photo of Llamazares. That photo is no longer on the U.S. government's Web site.
Ostick said he told Llamazares that the error occurred when an FBI "technician who put together the digitally enhanced image found an image (of hairline and wrinkles) that suited his purposes, and used it."
Llamazares, an elected member of Spanish parliament from the small, Communist-led United Left coalition, said he wants to know which photo of him the FBI used, and he threatened possible legal action.
Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that the Llamazares photo was from his 2004 election campaign.
Llamazares told reporters that he hoped it was just a case of the "low level and incompetence" of the FBI in the fight against Al Qaeda.

He said he would not travel to the United States, for fear of problems at the border, CNN partner station CNN+ reported.

Read More

What the Gaza war meant for Israel

Omri Buson says his "blood boils" every time he hears about the negotiations between Hamas and Israel over the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
From his point of view, Israel should have never ended last year's military offensive on Gaza without Shalit's return.
"We needed to hurt them and not have mercy ... to destroy every house till [we] found that soldier," says Buson, who dropped out of law school to open clothing shops in Jerusalem.

He admits that his views have become "very extreme in the last year because of the war".

But he is not alone. Israeli Knesset members have expressed similar views.

Operation devastation

in depth

The Israeli military offensive named Operation Defensive Shield killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, more than 1,000 of them civilians, including 400 children.

Thirteen Israelis were also killed, three of them civilians.

Its declared goals were to 'Bring Gilad Home' and to stop Qassam rocket attacks on Israel. It ended after 22 days due to international pressure on Israel.

Despite the high number of civilian Palestinian casualties, most Israelis consider the operation a success because, although Shalit did not 'come home', the rockets stopped.

War against protests

Now, one year since Operation Cast Lead, not only have the so-called red lines for what you can do to your enemy moved dangerously forward, but so have the lines of what the government can do its own people.

Israeli polls and surveys reveal that Israeli society and government are less tolerant than ever of views that oppose the government stance, which is held by the mainstream.

Last month the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) revealed an alarming trend in its annual survey on the protection of human rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories - the conditioning of rights.

"The realisation of the entire spectrum of rights is now more than ever dependent on what we say or believe, what ethnic group we belong to, how much money we have, and more," says the ACRI.

"We have the freedom to express ourselves and demonstrate - only if we don't say anything displeasing; we have the right to equal treatment and opportunities - only if we are "loyal" to the state."

In the streets, the Israeli security forces are waging a war against protests by Jewish left wing and human rights activists, who non-violently protest against Israel's separation barrier or against Jewish settlers taking over Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.

Many have been arrested and some were attacked by the security forces.

However, right-wingers protesting against the government's decision to temporarily freeze building in settlements are accorded much more leniency by Israeli law enforcement agencies.

During Operation Cast Lead about 800 Israeli citizens, most of them Arab, were arrested, with criminal charges brought against most of them.

In a recent editorial, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz called the arrests "an evil omen regarding the state's attitude toward protesters" and said that as a result, "concern is growing over Israel's image as a free and democratic country".

'Moral bankruptcy'

Right wing protesters have been treated more leniently than those on the left [EPA]
The infringement on the rights of Jewish Israelis comes as no surprise to Neve Gordon, an Israeli political science professor at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev.

"The war itself revealed the moral bankruptcy of Israel because if we look back we see the vast majority killed were citizens including hundreds of children," said Gordon, who has been under attack for his criticism of Israel and most recently for his call for an international boycott on his country until it ends the occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

"I don't think it's good for the morality of the country to kill children."

Buson disagrees: "If it were up to me I would close the water and electricity [to Gaza] until they return Gilad. Let them starve and die."

He says he opposes a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas. "I'd rather Shalit die there than do a deal with Hamas.

"It's not about one soldier's life. It's about deterrence. They need to understand with whom they are dealing. Our deterrence was damaged after the second Lebanon war. Now we got it back."

'Lesson through force'

Indeed many Israelis were more concerned about 'teaching the other side a lesson' by using overwhelming force, than with the hundreds of dead civilians and the devastating destruction of infrastructure.

For the Israeli political leadership, military and much of the Israeli public, the Gaza war, as Israelis refer to it, was about scaring the other side into submission, so that it will not dare to hurt Israel again. And, many believe, that was what Israel succeeded in doing.

Yehuda Shaul, the co-director of Breaking the Silence, the Israeli human rights organisation that collects the testimonies of soldiers about abuses committed while serving in the Occupied Territories, says: "What I find most disturbing is that the military and most Israelis perceive [the war on Gaza] as a great success. They don't recognise the price tag."

"And the fact that the military sees it as a great success means that the second round will be similar," Shaul adds.

Shaul's organisation was attacked by the office of the Israeli military spokesperson, but he nevertheless hopes that some Israelis recognise the gravity of their actions.

He points to the poll by Tel Aviv University's War and Peace Index.

When testimonies from soldiers were published soon after the war, few Israelis believed them, according to the index. But when Breaking the Silence published its report of chilling testimonies in July, the War and Peace Index found that the numbers who believed the testimonies rose from about 20 per cent to 43 per cent.

'Cast Lead II'

Still, the overwhelming majority of Israelis (76 per cent) saw no need to reinvestigate the operation in light of the testimonies. The pollsters believe that because of the prevailing view that the campaign was moderately or very successful (79 per cent), "the Israeli Jewish public is reluctant to deal with the question of its moral and human cost".

Some Israelis who supported the war see it very differently.

Marek Glezerman, the director of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Rabin Medical Center, says: "I thought it should be a short operation to stop the rockets."

"But it turned it to be a full blown war without concern for the other side and that leaves a very bad feeling," adds the doctor who is a friend and colleague of the Gaza doctor Ezzedin Abouelaish.

Glezerman believes that the quiet from the Gaza Strip is temporary: "The violence will come back. But at what price? It has not brought us closer to peace."

Meanwhile, some Israelis are talking about when Operation Cast Lead II will begin.

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-Pro-Russia politician set to sweep Ukraine polls

KIEV — Pro-Russia politician Viktor Yanukovich was on course Saturday to sweep the first round of Ukraine's presidential polls, five years after vote-rigging by his supporters sparked the Orange Revolution.
Polls showed Yanukovich with a clear lead going into the Sunday elections, albeit without the majority required to avoid a second round run-off against his main challenger, the glamorous Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
The Orange Revolution protests of late 2004 swept Ukraine's old order from power and created hopes of a new era of prosperity and European integration for the country of 46 million people bridging the EU and Russia.
But amid grave public disillusionment after five years of botched reform and political stalemate, the Revolution's hero, pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko, is set to be bundled out in the first round.
With Tymoshenko making much of her warm ties with Russia's strongman Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the outcome of the February 7 run-off is already being seen as good news for the Kremlin, which cut off all business with Yushchenko.
After a frenetic campaign that saw the main protagonists exchange stinging insults, Saturday was an official "day of calm" with all campaigning banned and posters supposed to be removed from the streets.
Yanukovich was due to pray at Kiev's millennium-old Caves Monastery, one of the the most revered sites of Orthodox Christianity. Yushchenko, an avowed history buff, was to attend a pan-Ukrainian meeting of Cossacks.
Tymoshenko, her voice hoarse from weeks of campaigning, issued a stern warning against the perils of voting for Yanukovich, saying the country risked becoming "internationally isolated, ruled by oligarch clans and criminals."
Yanukovich spat back: "What have the Orange leaders promised and not done over the last five years? They deceived the people."
Yanukovich should win around 40 percent of the vote in the first round and Tymoshenko 23 percent, according to the latest polls by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology.
But analysts believe the image-conscious prime minister -- famed for her traditional hair braid -- can still make up ground in the run-off.
Third place is expected to go to businessman Sergiy Tigipko who appears to have made a late surge and is given an outside chance of springing a first round upset.
Yushchenko won the presidency in a re-run election in December 2004 ordered by the courts after tens of thousands took to the streets to accuse Yanukovich of vote-rigging in the original polls that he won.
Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were comrades-in-arms in the Orange Revolution but later became sworn enemies, their relationship poisoned by a perennial power struggle and mutual accusations of criminal wrongdoing.
Since 2004, Yanukovich has sought to reinvent himself with the help of Western PR strategists and to show he is not a servant of the Kremlin but a defender of Ukrainian interests.
In a television appearance Friday he pledged to renegotiate gas supply deals with Russia that were agreed by Tymoshenko and Putin, describing the price Ukraine pays for Russian gas as "unjust."
He has also sought more support in the country's Ukrainian-speaking west -- traditionally the heartland of Tymoshenko and Yushchenko supporters -- while holding on to his powerbase in the Russian-speaking east.
The gloves-off campaign has also seen the past of the candidates once again dredged up.
Yanukovich was jailed twice in the Soviet era for theft and assault, though the convictions were erased in the late 1970s. Tymoshenko herself was briefly detained in 2001 on smuggling charges that were later quashed.

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-Tensions Mount in Haiti as Situation Grows Desperate

Aid workers and authorities in earthquake-ravaged Haiti warn tensions are rising as survivors become more desperate, waiting for food, water and medical care to reach them.

A huge international relief effort is under way.  Haiti and the United States have signed an agreement giving the U.S. control of the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, where international relief teams are working to get emergency aid to city residents.

But four days after the quake reduced the capital to rubble, the relief efforts are moving slowly.  Aid workers report patience is wearing thin, and without some help soon, the situation could degenerate into lawlessness and chaos.

There have been numerous reports of looting.  Witnesses also report men with machetes have been roaming the streets at night, helping themselves to whatever they can find in wrecked homes. 

Haiti's capital is now devoid of a functioning police force.  When the earthquake struck, it destroyed the city's prison, allowing thousands of inmates to escape.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to Haiti Saturday to get a first-hand look at relief efforts, days after tens of thousands of people were killed, and many other left homeless.

Clinton plans to meet with Haitian President René Preval and other officials, along with members of the U.S. government team on the ground.

Clinton said she will limit her visit to the confines of the airport so as not to disrupt relief efforts.  Secretary Clinton said she planned to take relief supplies with her and that later, the same aircraft will carry Americans and others being evacuated.

Clinton is traveling with Rajiv Shah, the new head of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to be in Haiti Sunday.  Mr. Ban has appealed for $550 million to meet the earthquake victims' most urgent needs.  He also said the window of opportunity to save those beneath the rubble is closing, but that search and rescue operations are continuing in what he called "an expedited way." 

He said the U.N. is also coordinating aid distribution, but that difficult logistics and limited capacity at the airport are slowing relief efforts.

The bodies of the dead litter the streets. Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive estimates that 100,000 people were killed.  Various Haitian officials have said some 40,000 bodies have been buried so far in mass graves.

Meanwhile, the top U.S. military chief, Admiral Michael Mullen, says up to 10,000 U.S. troops will either be in Haiti or offshore by Monday to help distribute aid. 

A U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, with 19 helicopters aboard arrived off Haiti's coast Friday to serve as a floating airport.

In Washington Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the Haitian capital's port is unusable, posing problems for long-term recovery projects.

Read More

WORLD NEWS|U.S. senator: consider air strikes on militants in Yemen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States should consider using air strikes, such as attacks by unmanned drones, to battle militants in Yemen that threaten American security, a senior U.S. senator said on Wednesday.




Sen. Carl Levin said that air strikes, clandestine actions, and stepping up U.S. military aid to Yemen are among options that should be considered for dealing with the threat from al Qaeda militants in the Gulf Arab state.




U.S. officials say the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bond airliner on December 25 received al Qaeda training in Yemen.



Levin, a Democrat, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, making him one of Congress' most influential voices on military matters.



"I think that these are proven threats to the United States, and if we identify them, it's appropriate for us to act against them," Levin said in a conference call with reporters. He said "most options ought to be on the table," but not a U.S. invasion of Yemen.



President Obama has said the United States does not plan to send U.S. troops into Yemen or Somalia as those countries struggle to contain Islamist militants.



The CIA under Obama has expanded attacks using unmanned aerial drones against al Qaeda and Taliban targets along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.



Levin said any air strikes in Yemen would need to be done with either the support or the acquiescence of Yemen's government. He spoke by phone from Dubai, where he had stopped on the way home from a trip to Afghanistan.

Read More

WORLD NEWS|Up to 150 UN staff still missing in Haiti after quake

Officials at the UN say between 100 and 150 people from its 9,000-strong peacekeeping mission in Haiti are still missing after the earthquake.




UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon listed 16 peacekeeping soldiers and police who are known to have died.



The UN said it urgently needed medical support and rescue teams with heavy lifting equipment.



The head of UN peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, said UN police and troops in Haiti had secured the port and airport.



They were also patrolling and helping clear roads, he added.



Top officials missing



Among those missing are UN mission head Hedi Annabi of Tunisia and his chief deputy, Luis Carlos da Costa.







Hedi Annabi is a Tunisian diplomat

Edmond Mulet, Mr Annabi's predecessor, is on his way to Port-au-Prince to take charge of the peacekeeping mission in an interim capacity.



Ten Brazilian peacekeepers, three from Jordan and a Haitian staff member are among those confirmed to have died.



China's state media said eight Chinese were dead and 10 more missing.



The UN said earlier that at least 56 of its staff had been injured in the earthquake.



The Minustah mission has been in Haiti since 2004, following the ousting of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.



Its mandate is to maintain law and order in the impoverished and often violent state and to administer security during election periods.



Minustah, an acronym from the French Mission Nations Unies de Stabilisation en Haiti, has about 9,000 multinational peacekeepers. Brazil is the biggest contributor and is in charge.



Brazilian anxiety



A UN logistical base near the airport is functioning and the UN expects to get an emergency response team on the ground shortly.



Brazil took charge of the Minustah operation in 2004.



The BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paulo says that given Brazil's central role the earthquake has caused a lot of concern and shock.



He says it has been a desperately worrying time for the families of the more than 1,200 Brazilian soldiers in the UN mission.



Some soldiers have managed to make contact to reassure relatives, but given the damage to infrastructure at Brazilian bases, communication is proving difficult, even for the government, our correspondent says.



Brazil's leadership of the UN mission has been difficult, amid continuing gang violence.



Minustah has been criticised by business leaders for being too lenient and by rights groups for using excessive force.

Read More

Solar wonder

Catch a glimpse
Eclipses should never be watched with the naked eye, as it is extremely dangerous for the eyes. Neither should an eclipse be watched through cooling glasses or sun glasses. A simple way of observing an eclipse is as follows: Take two pieces of plain cardboard and punch a hole of about 2mm in one of them. Hold this a few centimetres above the other piece, which acts as a screen. Stand with your back to the sun so that the sun's rays are above your shoulder. You can see the image of the eclipse on the screen.
Or, visit your nearest planetarium, which will have the right equipment for you to view the eclipse.
Try this simple experiment...Stand facing a light-bulb, and hold a coin close to one of your eyes (keeping the other eye closed). If you bring the coin close enough to your eye, it can block the light from the bulb almost completely. As you move the coin away from your eye, you can see more and more of the light, till you can see the bulb itself.
While this is easy enough to do, imagine this happening on an astronomical scale as during a solar eclipse. The moon, which revolves around the earth, is much closer to the earth (approximately 385,000 kms away) than the sun is (approximately 149 million kilometres) but the sizes of the sun and the moon when seen from the earth are the same — an almost magical coincidence!
Watch the sky

Because the moon's orbit is inclined at about five degrees to that of the earth, the moon can come in front of the sun only where the orbits of the moon and the earth intersect. These points are called the ‘nodes' of the moon's orbit.
When the moon in its journey around the earth arrives at a node, it blocks the rays of the sun from striking the earth, causing a total solar eclipse. When it moves away from the node, the moon will cover only a part of the sun, causing a partial eclipse.

An annular eclipse is when the moon does not cover the entire disk, allowing a thin rim of sunlight to be visible around the edge. On an average, there are two to five solar eclipses in a year. Eclipses last only a few minutes, as they can be seen only from the small portion of the earth on which the moon's shadow is cast.
On January 15, an annular eclipse will occur over India, starting at about 13: 23 IST, which is to last around 10.4 minutes., and a maximum of 11 minutes and 7 seconds over the Indian Ocean. An eclipse can be an inspiring event to watch, reminding us of the wonder that the universe is. Don't miss it!

Read More

Miep Gies

Miep Gies, who died on January 11 aged 100, was one of a Dutch couple who hid and sustained the family of Anne Frank for more than two years in an Amsterdam attic; later she helped to save Anne Frank's diary for posterity. 

Miep Gies in 1998 Miep Gies with a copy of her book "Anne Frank Remembered". On her left hand she is wearing a black onyx ring with a diamond in the center, a gift from Auguste von Pels, one of the doomed Jews she helped shelter Photo: AP

1940: Anne Frank at the age of 12 years, sitting at her desk at the Montessori school in Amsterdam. Photo: AFP/GETTYIMAGES

Miep Gies and her husband Jan in Amsterdam in 1987, beside the bookcase which led to the Frank family hiding place. Photo: EPA

1945: Miep Gies, front row left, with Otto Frank, front row center, and other 'helpers' Bep Voskuijl, front row right, Johannes Kleiman, back row left, and Victor Kugler, back row right Photo: AP

She was born Hermine Santrouschitz on February 15 1909 into a German Roman Catholic family in Vienna, but was sent to the Netherlands when she was 11 to escape the food shortages in Austria. The family with which she lived in Leiden gave her the nickname Miep and later adopted her. By the outbreak of the Second World War she was working as an assistant to Otto Frank, the owner of a pectin manufacturing company in Amsterdam.
After the Nazi invasion of 1940, Frank prepared a secret annex behind a swinging bookcase in a room above the firm's offices at 263 Prinsengracht; and in July 1942 the family of four – Otto, his wife Edith and their daughters Margot and Anne – went into hiding, leaving a false trail indicating that they had fled to Switzerland. Soon afterwards they were joined by other Jews, the van Pels family and Miep Gies's family dentist, Fritz Pfeffer – eight people in all.
For two years Miep Gies and her husband Jan, a municipal employee whom she had married in 1941, risked their lives to smuggle in food and provisions and news from outside, begging, buying and bartering what they needed from farmers and shopkeepers. They were helped throughout by her colleagues Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl.
Miep acted as a confidante for the adolescent Anne, bringing her paper for her diary and, on one occasion, a pair of second-hand high-heeled shoes. The Gies's heroic feat of humanitarianism ended on August 4 1944, when the Frank family were betrayed (by a person whose identity remains unknown), arrested and sent to concentration camps.
When the Gestapo arrived, Miep Gies was at her desk in the office below. She recognised from the voice of one of the arresting officers that he was Viennese, and she managed to charm him, perhaps saving her own life.
She never saw her Jewish friends again but "could tell from the sound of their feet on the wooden steps that they were coming down like beaten dogs".
Later, at considerable personal risk, she went to Gestapo headquarters to try to bargain for their release – but to no avail. Eventually she returned to their hiding place and found Anne's diary, its pages scattered over the floor.
She intended to return it to its author, knowing how important the diary had been to her, and locked it away without reading a word. Nearly a year later, Anne's father Otto returned from Auschwitz. He knew his wife and friends had not survived, but still hoped that his two daughters, Margot, 18, and Anne, 15, had been spared.
Two months later he received a letter that confirmed that both girls had died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, less than a month before the camp was liberated by British soldiers.
Miep Gies was with him when he received the news and could not find the words to comfort him. Then she remembered Anne's diary. She took it out of the desk and gave it to him, saying: "Here is your daughter Anne's legacy to you."
Eventually published in 1947, The Diary of Anne Frank became, after the Bible, the best-selling non-fiction book in the world.
Miep Gies recalled Otto Frank's dignified refusal to seek revenge. He declined ever to identify the man who had arrested them, telling her: "Miep, that man may have children. Those children should not have to live with such a thing."
For two years she resisted all Otto Frank's efforts to persuade her to read his daughter's diaries, but eventually relented and was glad that while Anne had invented pseudonyms for everyone else, Miep's name was unchanged.
For the rest of her life, Miep Gies devoted herself to sustaining Anne Frank's legacy, answering letters from all over the world. In 1987 she published a book, Anne Frank Remembered. In it she observed: "I am not a hero. I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more – much more – during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the heart of those of us who bear witness."
She was decorated by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands for her heroism and dedication and the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem bestowed on her the title of "Righteous Gentile". She was also honoured by the German government.
On August 4 every year, the day of the arrest, Miep Gies would shut herself away in her house and see no one. "I act as though the day does not exist. It is my personal memorial to my people," she explained.
In 1996 Jon Blair's film Anne Frank Remembered won an Oscar for best documentary feature. Blair took Miep Gies to the ceremony in Hollywood, and as they were on their way to the awards in their limousine she remarked that she had agreed to come because Anne Frank had always wanted to be famous, and that she had loved Hollywood. Blair took Miep Gies on to the stage when he made his acceptance speech, and the audience gave her a standing ovation.
Jan Gies died in 1993, and she is survived by a son.

 

Read More

WORLD NEWS:-China avoids direct reply to land grabbing reports

BEIJING: Chinese foreign ministry said on Tuesday that the boundary dispute with India will not affect the friendly relationship between the two

countries.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a reporter that she has not seen reports in The Times of India about Chinese forces grabbing land into the Indian territory across the border.

She did not directly reply whether land grabbing has taken place but went on to say that China has a "positive attitude" on the need to further develop the friendly relationship with India and settle the border issue.

The two countries have reached a consensus on the need to settle the boundary problem and were working in that direction.

Replying to another question at the ministry’s press conference, she said the launch of the inceptor missile by China on Monday has not left any debris in the outer space and will do nothing to hinder any space craft in future.

The inceptor missile, which was successfully launched by China, filled the country’s legitimate need to "safeguard territorial integrity," she said. It was launched with a peaceful purpose, she said.

Jiang did not answer a question on whether it is meant to counter Patriot missiles sold by the United States to Taiwan. China regards Taiwan as part of its own territory and has often threatened military action to take it back. She said China is totally opposed to the US sales of missiles or any form of interaction between Washington and Taiwan.

Read More