HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Wishing you all the best in 2006!

Chinese Night at the ACC Featuring Yao Ming

Friday January 6th, 2006

Air Canada Centre
40 Bay St.
Toronto, Ontario M5J 2X2

Air Canada Centre is located at the northwest corner of Lakeshore Blvd.
(westbound) and Bay St. in downtown Toronto.

The NBA All-Star Center from China Yao Ming and the Houston Rockets will be making his annual visit to Toronto to face Chris Bosh and the Raptors. This will be Yao's only appearance in Toronto this season so don't miss out on this rare opportunity to catch him live in action! NAAAP Toronto and the Canadian Chinese Youth Athletics Association (CCYAA) is offering tickets at a discounted price to celebrate the arrival of Asia's best basketball player ever!

- Lower Bowl Endzone Reg. Price: $83 NAAAP/CCYAA Member: $75
- Balcony Prime Reg. Price: $55 NAAAP/CCYAA Member: $50
- Balcony Reg. Price: $38 NAAAP/CCYAA Member: $35

To order tickets, please Email: clement@ccyaa.org or call 416 845-8933.

More information is available at:
http://www.ccyaa.com/content/templates/t_ccyaa.asp?articleid=214&zoneid=7

You can judge a book by its title: study

(CBC) - A group of statisticians in Britain has concluded that a book's bestseller potential can be predicted by its title.

Atai Winkler and his assistants have produced a complex computer model that attempts to calculate a novel's likelihood of hitting the bestseller charts.

The study was commissioned by British literary website Lulu.com, which covers the world of self-publishing. It analyzes the titles of every book to have topped the hardcover fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List from 1955 to 2004. The winning titles were compared with the titles of less successful novels by the same authors.

"When we tested our model on 700 titles published over 50 years, it correctly predicted whether a book was a bestseller or not for nearly 70 per cent of cases," says Winkler.

According to the study, these are the common attributes of high-selling novels:

- The first word in the title was a pronoun, a verb, an adjective or a greeting.

- They had metaphorical titles instead of literal ones.

- The title involved either a possessive case with a noun showing ownership (e.g. "John's watch") or contained an adjective and a noun (e.g. "pretty horses").

According to the statistical model, Sleeping Murder (1976) by Agatha Christie is the perfect title.

But the model is not accurate in all cases. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books scored low.

Bob Young, CEO of Lulu's, concedes the model shouldn't be used as a steadfast rule for authors: "If you actually write a good book with a bad title it will sell more copies than a bad book with a good title."

Indian actor Sanjay Dutt says the pain of losing his father still fresh

MUMBAI, India (AP) - Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt said he continues to grieve for his father and veteran Bollywood actor Sunil Dutt seven months after his death.
The senior Dutt, who was a popular politician and a federal government minister, died of a heart attack in May.

"I have missed my dad every day, every moment," Sanjay Dutt said in an interview published in the January issue of Filmfare magazine. "I know he is with me spiritually but I miss his physical presence."

Sanjay Dutt's sister Priya recently won election to Parliament from a suburban Mumbai constituency that had elected their father five times. Sanjay Dutt said campaigning for his sister brought back vivid memories of his father.

"I was overwhelmed by people's responses to my father," Dutt said about the love and warmth shown by people from his father's northern Bandra constituency in Mumbai. "It was there for me to see and feel and I nearly wept when I got back home after my campaigning."

Sunil Dutt was a versatile actor, appearing in blockbusters Mother India, Yaadein (Memories), Waqt (Time) and Milan (Union) in a career spanning five decades.

His son Sanjay is a popular actor in his own right, appearing in more than 100 Bollywood movies, including blockbuster hits Munnabhai MBBS and Parineeta - The Married Woman over the past two years.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Visuals in Chen Kaige's film The Promise stun movie-goers in Asia

HONG KONG (AP) - Chen Kaige's mythological epic The Promise is one of the most visually stunning Chinese movies in recent years, so aesthetically mesmerizing that it overwhelms - and perhaps redeems - a convoluted and at times bizarre plot.
In one scene, a goddess appears sporting a halo-like ring around her upright hairdo and a robe complete with tentacles that wriggle as if she were underwater. A slave runs at the speed of light and walks on water.

Among the amazing sets, a red palace resembles Beijing's Forbidden City - except it is designed as a circular maze. Another scene takes place in a half-sphere-shaped cage in a building with red backlit oval windows. Two characters face off in a room with screens sliding along circular tracks.

Chen's epic is largely the artistic vision of Tim Yip, who won an Oscar for art direction for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the special effects wizardry of Centro Digital Pictures, whose credits include Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill series and Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle.

And the breathtaking visuals came at a steep price: the movie cost $35 million US to make.

The Promise marks a strong comeback for Chen, one of China's most respected directors - after the heartwarming but low-key Together and the disappointing English-language erotic thriller Killing Me Softly.

It's already garnered a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film and will represent China in the same category at the Oscars. The movie set a new opening weekend box office record in China last weekend, grossing 74.52 million yuan ($9.2 million), the official Xinhua news agency reported.

But the sheer artistic brilliance of The Promise is tempered by a long-winded plot.

Cecilia Cheung plays an ordinary girl transformed by a goddess into a princess on one condition - that she will never find true love.

Nicholas Tse portrays a duke who threatens to take the princess by force. A general's slave (Jang Dong-gun) comes to the rescue, and the princess falls in love with her saviour whom she wrongly believes to be the general (Hiroyuki Sanada).

The truth is uncovered and the princess' destiny is lived out as the general, the slave and the duke engage in a battle, eventually killing each other.

Some plot twists don't quite work. When the duke accused the princess of deceiving him as a youth, saying "You destroyed my chance to be a good person," the line was met with incredulous chuckles at one Hong Kong theatre.

The acting has bright spots, but isn't outstanding overall. Sanada - who also appeared in the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai - brings out the haughty quality of the general, despite having to deliver lines in Mandarin. South Korean Jang's intense gaze highlights the downtrodden status of the slave he portrays, while Chinese actor Liu Ye gives depth to another slave character.

The multinational cast reflects an increasingly popular strategy to fashion movie productions with a pan-Asian appeal.

Chen's choice of The Promise is also consistent with a recent trend of Chinese directors to shift from depictions of traditional Chinese culture and life under communism to action epics.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Ang Lee movie Brokeback Mountain a quiet holiday box office boon

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Who's afraid of a couple of gay cowboys? Not moviegoers, who helped Brokeback Mountain post the highest per-screen average over the film-flush holiday weekend.

The Ang Lee film, which follows the 20-year forbidden romance between two roughneck ranch hands, earned $13,599 US per theatre, compared with $9,305 for weekend winner King Kong and $8,225 for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The big question is whether Brokeback can maintain its momentum as it moves from selected cities, where audiences are receptive to the subject matter, to suburbs far and wide, where that might not be the case.

Early numbers - and early awards buzz - establish the picture's staying power, industry insiders say. Brokeback earned a leading seven Golden Globe nominations.

"It delivered very strong growth in what is truly a highly unforgiving, competitive, cruel market at this Christmas period," said Jack Foley, president of theatrical distribution for Focus Features. "It showed it has breadth beyond the gay community."

Distributors planned to roll out the film slowly. It opened in just six theatres, where it earned an "unprecedented" $109,000 per venue, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

The film expanded to 69 theatres the following week, then to 217 over the holiday weekend, reaching suburban audiences in Portland, Dallas, Denver and Atlanta.

The gradual release allows moviegoers to talk up the film's appeal, Foley said.

And it seems to be working.

"This is a film that builds through word of mouth and critical acclaim," Dergarabedian said. "People want to see what all the fuss is about."

Response has been so robust that distributors are expanding the film's rollout ahead of schedule. It will show on 269 screens this Friday, and reach an additional 80 markets the following week, Foley said.

Still, he acknowledges that bringing a homosexual love story to the Bible Belt presents its own set of challenges. Various Christian groups voiced opposition to the film before its release.

Ted Baehr, who reviews films for the Christian Film & Television Commission, called the film "abhorrent" and "twisted, laughable, frustrating and boring neo-Marxist homosexual propaganda" in a review on the Commission's MovieGuide website.

But based on the film's reception in Atlanta and Dallas, Foley said he expects it will be well received in other markets.

"We're rolling it out ahead of schedule because the demand is there," he said.

Ever-building buzz can only help Brokeback, Dergarabedian said.

"This film has so much buzz going for it and so much critical acclaim going for it, it will transcend any limits the subject matter has placed on it," he said. "If you want to be a well-informed viewer on Oscar night, you should probably see this movie."

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Layton slams Liberals for racist taunts against his wife, an NDP candidate

TORONTO (CP) - A Liberal party official's posting of "racist" comments on a website, comparing Jack Layton's Chinese-born wife Olivia Chow to a dog, was "no joke," the NDP leader said Thursday. Mike Klander, executive vice-president of the federal Liberal party's Ontario wing, stepped down Boxing Day after photographs of Chow - who is also an NDP candidate in Toronto - and a chow chow dog were posted on his blog, under the heading Separated at Birth.

"I frankly never expected that we would face such things, that a candidate would be singled out," Layton said in his first public appearance since before Christmas.

"I certainly hope racial slurs will come to an end in this campaign."

Layton noted that Europeans who controlled portions of China in the past used to hang signs that read "no dogs or Chinese allowed," and said no Chinese person familiar with their history will ever forget those signs.

"This is no joke, and I think it's a culture of arrogance that has set in . . . and the election will have to deal with it," he said. "It reminds us that insults flow from arrogance. There is far too much of this in today's Liberal party."

Chow appeared with Layton later Thursday at a campaign event in the city's east Chinatown district, and said the comparisons to the dog on the Liberal website were hurtful.

"I think I was tremendously saddened," she said. "To have this kind of racial slur is humiliating. I think the true mask of the Liberal party has been taken off, and I certainly hope on Jan. 23 people will understand that it is time for a change."

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper was equally sharp.

"To see them calling Mr. Layton names, comparing his wife to an animal, this is the campaign of the Liberal party," Harper said during a campaign stop in Kelowna, B.C. "It's all fear, it's all smear.

"It's one incident of scandal and corruption after another. What this should tell all of us, the time of these guys is up."

Layton compared the web-based insult to school-yard behaviour, and said it's the same kind of discrimination many new Canadians face when they look for a job.

"That kind of attitude has no place in our country," he said. "Canada should not be governed by people who think that way."

The couple appeared to easily win over their Chinese-Canadian audience Thursday when Layton began by offering greetings in Cantonese with Chow translating into English, before he switched to English while she again translated.

Layton also won applause for saying Canada should apologize for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants in the late 1890s and early 1900s, and compensate those who paid the tax and their surviving families.

"We need to have a response from our government that starts with an apology - an open and complete apology to the Chinese community," he said. "That has got to be the starting place for redress."

Ottawa collected $23 million from more than 80,000 Chinese immigrants between 1885 and 1923, with the tax ranging from $50 to $500 a person.

Last month, the federal government signed a $2.5-million agreement in principle with the National Congress of Chinese Canadians and other organizations to set up educational and commemorative projects related to the head tax.

But Prime Minister Paul Martin has refused to apologize for the controversial tax.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

2 Koreas establish limited phone links for South Korean businesses

SEOUL (AP) - The two Koreas established limited commercial telephone links across their heavily armed border on Wednesday for the first time in their 60 years of division, officials said. The cross-border phone service is exclusively for South Korean businesses operating in an industrial zone in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, 80 kilometres north of Seoul.

Three-hundred phone lines were established to the complex, according to Koo Ja-ho, a spokesman for KT Corp., South Korea's main telecommunications company. South Koreans run 15 factories there using cheap North Korean labour.

Telephone lines between the countries were severed in 1945, after Soviet troops occupied what later became the communist North. The two countries have remained separated since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

"Following the opening of phone and fax service in the Kaesong industrial complex, sufficient consultation with the North is necessary to expand exchange and co-operation in the overall information and communications sector," Chin Dae-je, the South's minister for communications, said at a ceremony in the industrial zone.

Chin's remarks were carried by South Korea's Yonhap news agency. Foreign media were not allowed to directly cover the ceremony.

The Kaesong industrial complex is one of the showcase inter-Korean projects launched after the landmark 2000 summit between leaders of the divided states. South Korean companies started producing kitchenware and other goods at the site last year.

About 6,000 North Korean workers are employed at the southern-run factories. South Korean officials said the number of such factories will rise to around 300 by the end of next year and to 1,000 within the following several years.

The new phone service will charge 40 cents US per minute. Previous calls from the North could only be made through Japan and cost more than $2 US per minute.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Toronto Chinese Orchestra | 2006 New Year Concert

Sunday, January 22, 2006 - 7:30 pm

Markham Theatre for Performing Arts
Anthony Roman Centre
171 Town Centre Blvd.
Markham, ON, L3R 8G5

Box Office: 905-305-SHOW (7469)
Email: 305_show@markham.ca

Ticket Prices: $22.00, $30.00 or $40.00 depending on seating preference.
Due to the popularity for tickets, it is suggested to purchase your tickets early
to ensure seating.

Toronto Chinese Orchestra is a not-for-profit organization, a subsidiary of the Toronto Chinese Music Association. It was founded in 1993, formed by a group of Chinese traditional music enthusiasts. Our goalis to promote and develop Chinese music, through performing both traditional and modern music and integrate Chinese music within the Canadian multicultural community.

www.torontochineseorchestra.com

South Korean scientist produced no patient-specific stem cells: university

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk produced no patient-specific stem cells, despite claims in what was seen as a landmark 2005 research paper, Seoul National University said Thursday. Roe Jung-hye, the university's dean of research affairs, said an investigative panel found stem cells Hwang claimed to have established in the paper came from fertilized eggs at Seoul's Mizmedi Hospital, not patient-tailored stem cells.

"The panel couldn't find stem cells that match patients' DNA regarding the 2005 paper and it believes that Hwang's team didn't secure scientific data to prove that (stem cells) were made," Roe said.

She spoke as the panel released interim results of its investigation into the work of the disgraced scientist. The university said last Friday at least nine of the 11 stem cell lines documented in the article were fabricated and it was investigating the remaining two.

Last week, Hwang, who had been celebrated as a hero in South Korea for his purported breakthroughs, apologized for the fabrication and stepped down as professor at the university. He insists, however, his team has developed the technology to create patient-matched stem cells.

Scientists see the development of stem cells that match a patient's DNA as a huge leap toward treatments for incurable afflictions such as Alzheimer's disease and diabetes.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

GM and Ford skidded toward precipice as Asian carmakers cruised through 2005

TORONTO (CP) - The past year may not have been the worst of times for General Motors and Ford. But if times get much worse, the two biggest North American-based automakers are headed for a crash. And auto-industry expectations for 2006 are not rosy, as high energy costs scorch motorists' incomes and drag down sales of high-profit large sport-utility vehicles and other trucks. "For 2005 and beyond, we're going to build great products, a strong business and better world," Ford Motor Co. chairman and CEO Bill Ford declared optimistically in January.

It hasn't turned out that way. The automaker's stock price has fallen from near $15 US when Ford made his promise to the $8 level during a year which included a bond downgrade to junk status for both Ford and industry leader General Motors Corp.

As the year drew to an end, Japan's Toyota disclosed plans to produce 9.1 million vehicles in 2006, which might depose GM after seven decades as the world's biggest-production automaker.

Symbolizing the year, Canada's top-selling vehicle in November was, as usual, the Ford F-Series pickup truck - but Honda's compact Civic was only 105 units behind the F-150's year-to-date sales total of 64,430 and gaining fast, well ahead of the Dodge Caravan minivan.

That came as the Canadian market share of the traditional Big Three - GM, Ford and Chrysler - fell under half in October for the first time ever.

"Add in dozens of suppliers tied to them that are failing, and it's pretty ugly," observed auto industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants, a Toronto-area industry research firm.

The bankruptcy filing of U.S. parts giant Delphi Corp. rocked the industry, prompting fears of cascading cuts in capacity, workforces and wages through the parts sector.

For Canadian parts makers, "the lack of investment in the past decade has really hurt them because the exchange rate has moved against them," DesRosiers said, adding that another problem is that many Canadian parts producers are in energy-intensive areas.

Employment in Canada's parts business stood at 98,000 people in September, down 3 1/2 per cent from a year earlier, and job-cut announcements continued through the final quarter of 2005.

The good news for the Canadian vehicle industry is that the assembly sector has held up well and the most popular Japanese-branded cars are made in Ontario: the Civic in Alliston, near Barrie, and Toyota's Corolla and Matrix in the southwestern Ontario community of Cambridge.

"Thank God we have the new domestics," DesRosiers said. "Honda, Toyota and Suzuki will account for about 35 per cent of (Canadian) vehicle production this year."

For Ford, the year just went from bad to worse.

In January the company pulled a Super Bowl commercial showing a clergyman tempted by a pickup truck, after complaints it made light of sex abuse by clergy.

The automaker also got caught between conservative groups offended by Ford's toleration of same-sex rights, and gay-rights activists angered when Ford dropped ads from gay-oriented publications, a decision it later reversed.

Early in the year Ford halved output at its minivan plant in Oakville, Ont., as the Freestar failed to shine in a crowded market.

In May, credit rating agencies reduced GM and Ford debt to below-investment-grade status.

General Motors said in June it would cut 25,000 jobs by 2008, and raised that number in November to 30,000, including 3,600 in Canada.

Shortly after GM's June announcement, Toyota said it was building a new 1,300-worker factory in the southwestern Ontario city of Woodstock.

Ford, GM and Chrysler indulged in a summertime orgy of sales incentives, handing out employee discounts to all buyers. This kept sales rolling but when the incentives ended so did the volume gains - and the skid was aggravated by a hurricane-blown rise in gasoline prices to over $1 per litre in September, which cut sales of thirsty SUVs and other trucks.

"We think the trend is still lower, in terms of the traditional Big Three losing market share," said Carlos Gomes, a Bank of Nova Scotia economist specializing in the auto sector.

"The main reason for that is that the large increase in energy costs has really accelerated the shift to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles."

In negotiations in September, the Canadian Auto Workers reached agreements without a strike with Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. The three-year contracts provided annual pay raises of 1.5, one and one per cent. Each deal also provided for 1,000 or more job losses.

In October, after months of brinksmanship, GM reached an agreement with its U.S. unionized workforce to reduce health-case costs by $1 billion a year. That came as GM reported a third-quarter loss of $1.6 billion US, deepening its nine-month loss to $3.8 billion.

Shortly after that, CEO Rick Wagoner stressed that GM was not considering bankruptcy.

"The good news is, we know what we need to be successful in the business," Wagoner said. The bad news: "What we need to do is get products that people are excited about and price them the right way, supported by the right kind of cost structure."

By late in the year, the price of credit default swaps on GM's estimated $276 billion US in debt - derivatives providing insurance against default - was rising, indicating that sophisticated market players increasingly anticipate a bankruptcy restructuring.

Shares in GM, whose last brush with insolvency was in 1992, fell to the lowest level since the crash of 1987.

"There is a group within Wall Street that believes Ford is in much worse shape than General Motors," DesRosiers said. "Because Ford doesn't have GM's size some of their troubles are more problematic."

Ford managed nine-month net income of $1.9 billion US while eliminating thousands of white-collar jobs. It also left its workforce in holiday-season suspense awaiting a January announcement which was speculated to involve job cuts on a scale similar to GM's.

Ford's January purge will probably conclude "the worst of the bad news" from the automakers, Gomes said.

"My concern is that there may be still some additional jobs that are at risk on the parts side of the business, especially with the currency continuing to appreciate."

The North American automakers weren't the only ones suffering an annus horribilis.

In Germany, another high-cost, heavily unionized auto industry, Vokswagen threatened to cut 30,000 jobs while falling into a series of messy scandals amid allegations ranging from bribery to providing prostitutes to union leaders.

At DaimlerChrysler, CEO Juergen Schrempp stepped aside amid weak results and quality glitches at the Mercedes-Benz division. At year-end, Mercedes-Benz faced 8,500 job cuts.

Dieter Zetsche, after presiding over a turnaround of North American Chrysler operations, was named to succeed Schrempp.

The ornately moustachioed Zetsche brought what many regarded as an unGermanic verve to Detroit: in October his wife was fined $3,000 over a party in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where two dozen young people were cited for underage drinking.

Britain's MG Rover Group, which at one time as British Leyland was the world's third-largest carmaker, went out of business. Its assets were bought by Nanjing Automobile of China.

In a final piece of bad news for established automakers, China said it became a net exporter of cars and trucks in 2005, as its automotive exports swelled 133.5 per cent in the first 10 months of the year.

In 2006, "we're expecting a softer market, especially in the United States," said Scotiabank's Gomes.

"The main reason for that is that the spike in energy prices will cut into disposable income quite significantly."

For Canada's industry, "I'm kind of cautiously pessimistic," DesRosiers said.

"We think the market's been overbought, highly dependent on incentives, and even a reasonably healthy economy isn't enough to allow it to grow."

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Hong Kong partially lifts 2-year-old ban on beef imported from United States

HONG KONG (AP) - Hong Kong said Thursday it has partially lifted a ban on U.S. beef imports that became effective two years ago following the discovery of mad cow disease in America. The decision, effective immediately, came about two weeks after Japan announced it would relax its ban on U.S. beef. South Korea, another big American trading partner, was also expected to end its embargo soon. Hong Kong said only boneless beef from cattle less than 30 months old could be imported to the city.

The animal's brain, spinal cord and other parts with a high-risk of mad cow disease must be removed during slaughtering, the government said.

"We will closely monitor the situation and review our import requirements as and when necessary," a government statement said.

The government said it decided to partially lift the ban after becoming satisfied with enhanced U.S. control measures against mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

The ban had been effective since Dec. 24, 2003, after mad cow disease was detected in a cow in Washington state that had been imported from Canada.

Hong Kong lifted its ban on Canadian beef last December.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Let's think again about redress for head tax scandal

The Vancouver Province
December 28, 2005

It is becoming increasingly clear that a federal government plan designed to atone for almost a century of injustice inflicted on the Chinese-Canadian community is not merely insufficient, but risks adding insult to injury.

When community groups from across the country were flown to Vancouver Nov. 24 to hear details of the plan from multiculturalism minister Raymond Chan, their expectations were high.

For more than 20 years, prominent community leaders have campaigned for an apology and compensation for victims of the notorious head tax, imposed on all Chinese immigrants to Canada from 1885 to 1923.

But the agreement in principle with four community groups that Chan announced offered only funds for educational projects and memorial plaques.

Leading intellectuals among the Chinese community in Vancouver say the negotiations that produced the deal were held with groups "hand-picked" by Ottawa and were not representative of the community at large.

They say the realization that an apology would not be part of the deal came as a major shock.

At a meeting this week, they estimated that as many as 90 per cent of Chinese-Canadians now want the government to rescind the agreement.

Most adamant in its opposition is the Chinese Canadian National Council, whose founding president, Joseph Wong of Toronto, has warned that the issue could tilt the balance against the Liberals in ridings where there is a substantial Chinese-Canadian vote.

Since the early 1980s, the CCNC has been compiling a register of those who paid the head tax, which rose over the years from $50 to a staggering $500. The list, which includes descendants of victims, contains some 4,000 names.

Community leaders say the demand for compensation is more symbolic than it is about the money.

"We want honorable redress for our Chinese pioneers," says Thekla Lit, a Vancouver social worker and prominent activist.

The Liberal government's hasty attempt to put right a historic wrong on the eve of an election smacks of opportunism.

The head-tax scandal already grubbies the pages of Canada's history books and any redress should not be tarnished by an association with cheap political advantage.

Prime Minister Paul Martin should admit his mistake, cancel the agreement and promise to think again. After Jan. 23.

What do you think? Leave a brief comment, name and town at: 604-605-2029,
fax: 604-605-2099 or e-mail: provletters@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Province 2005

Cultural issues, drugs, poverty among issues facing gang members in Canada

VANCOUVER (CP) - They're tough guys bent on making big bucks in the drug trade, ready to stick a gun to anyone's head for messing with their turf. Cities like Vancouver and Toronto have been rocked by a wave of gang violence in recent years, and although the dynamics between the cities are markedly different, there is one common denominator: young men with macho bravado eager to make big money in illegal drugs.

Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg also have their share of gang trouble and are beefing up police resources to deal with so-called gangbangers.

But an American-style law-order approach may not always be the best way to go, says a Toronto criminologist who would rather see the root causes of the violence addressed.

Almost 100 men in rival Indo-Canadian gangs in Vancouver have been murdered since 1994, often execution-style, over drug deals gone bad.

"Most of them have been killed by guns and most have been killed in public," said Vancouver police Insp. Kash Heed of the death toll in and around the city.

The problem among Indo-Canadian gangsters is multi-layered, steeped in cultural issues and fuelled by British Columbia's lucrative marijuana trade that is increasingly seeing the drug being trucked across the U.S. border.

Toronto's gang violence, often involving gun-wielding young black men, has escalated to the point that a coalition of African-Canadians recently called on Prime Minister Paul Martin to declare the issue a national crisis.

Of the more than 70 murders in the Toronto area so far this year, a large portion of them have involved gang members - as many as 30 in the black community and many others among Asian, Latino and Tamil gangs, said Tony Warr, Toronto's deputy police chief.

The brazen nature of the violence was highlighted recently when an 18-year-old black man was shot at church while attending the funeral of a teen killed by apparently gang-related gunfire.

Scot Wortley, a criminologist at the University of Toronto, said Toronto's black gangs have consolidated within the last few years into two major camps: the Bloods and the Crips, although they may not be derivatives of the founding American gangs.

"It's a very unique situation in Toronto with respect to black gangs because there is the American influence of the Bloods and the Crips but they've also kind of merged with the traditional Jamaican posses," Wortley said.

Much of the city's gang activity among black youth involves those living in housing projects such as those in the notorious Jane and Finch area in the city's northwest reaches, he said.

"A very high proportion of the gang members in our studies have come from poor backgrounds and single-parent backgrounds, particularly where the father is completely absent."

Heed said there's no typical profile of an Indo-Canadian gangster who may find himself in over his head and, too often, dead.

"Some are recent immigrants, some are fourth generation (Canadians)," he said, adding that while some gang members aren't so well off and have little education, others are university-educated and from affluent families.

All young gang members, however, have a few things in common - starting with machismo.

"There have been instances where because someone bumped into you at a bar or looked at you the wrong way, the dispute's carried on and people have been murdered because of it," Heed says.

In Vancouver, Heed says the turning point for some young boys who would later become gangsters came in 1994, after the high-profile murders of Ron and Jimmy Dosanjh.

The brothers were killed in a street war between rival gangs in the illicit drug trade.

Young, impressionable boys were also drawn to notorious gang leader Bindy Johal, who, along with five other men, was acquitted in the Dosanjh murders after a seven-month trial.

Boys idolized Johal, turning him into a symbol of power and wealth. Some still revere the man who was gunned down in 1998 as he danced in a crowded nightclub.

Like many of the other murders, Johal's killing remains unsolved.

Heed sees no end to the death toll resulting from a lifestyle that is attracting Indo-Canadian males to a world of flash, cash and women.

"I definitely do not see it stopping," he said. "I see it carrying on and I see us trying to do the best we can to either suppress it or control it."

Heed's concern is that the violence is continuing to spill onto the streets and endangering the lives of innocent people.

They include a woman who was shot in the head recently as she lay on her couch watching TV during a gun battle between Indo-Canadian men outside her Port Moody, B.C., condo complex.

Almost two years ago, Heed brought together various factions of the Sikh community to discuss the violence that appeared to have no end.

"It was the first time since 1965, I think, that they were all in one room, whether they were fundamentalist or moderate (Sikhs), to talk about this particular problem."

The group eventually pressured the Liberal government to re-establish the RCMP's B.C. Task Force on Gang Violence to address the issue.

Vancouver police are now trying a new tactic that involves telling gang members' families about their sons' activities.

Most of the men, some in their late 20s, still live at home with their parents.

"We are going to the families early on and we're telling them exactly what their sons are involved in and that we expect them to take action because I don't want to be telling them that their son is in jail or on a slab in a hospital morgue," Heed said.

Harbans Kandola, who heads a group called VIRSA (meaning heritage in Punjabi) said the first priority in tackling gang violence among youth is to educate parents on instilling discipline, particularly among boys.

Kandola's group has developed an eight-week parenting program to help Indo-Canadian parents learn about the differences between their upbringing in India and the pressures their Canadian-born kids are up against.

"Cultural conflict is a huge issue, a huge issue," he said.

The tendency toward favouring boys in the culture has produced what Kandola calls Generation S - for Generation Spoiled.

"When a 19-year-old has a $50,000 car you're asking for a death warrant," he said. "Our research tells us that 70 per cent of the boys who are killed are either the only son or the first son."

People who arrive in Canada with nothing often focus on providing a home for their children through hard work that can mean being away from their kids to the point that they're neglected, Kandola said.

Much of the poverty experienced by black gang members in Toronto is a direct result of former Ontario premier Mike Harris's social cutbacks from 1995 to 2003 that saw the decimation of education and recreation programs, Wortley says.

"Many criminologists would forecast that by doing that you're going to create the conditions to produce crime among the poorer segments of society. So rather than preventing crime, you are going to spend your money to deal with the criminals once they're produced," he said.

"What we're seeing, particularly in some of the interviews we're conducting now, is a profound sense of social alienation, a feeling that 'because of my social circumstances, Canadian society does not care anything about me, I am not part of the mainstream society, I do not have legitimate educational opportunities, I do not have the opportunity to make it in the legitimate world."'

Some young people kicked out of school starting five years ago, when Ontario's zero-tolerance Safe Schools Act was brought in, have drifted into crime by joining gangs where they may get a sense of belonging, he said.

"They say they will not work at minimum-wage jobs flipping burgers so they choose to engage in the glamourous world of crime and gangs so they can keep their dignity and respect among their peers and at least have the chance to get wealthy selling drugs."

While various groups are currently developing programs to combat crime in the Toronto area, what young people need most is hope - from a minimum standard of living, a quality education, recreation, and intervention strategies that start as early as pre-school, Wortley said.

"Once young people lose hope, and believe me, a lot of youth lose hope by the time they're 14, 15 years old . . . once they feel no stake in conformity and once they feel their future in legitimate Canadian society can't be found, that's the first step towards losing them to crime."

Some violent street gangs in major Canadian cities:

Vancouver area: Independent Solidiers - primarily Indo-Canadian members; UN Gang - mostly Indo-Canadians, Asians, Persians.

Toronto: Some black gangs derived from Bloods and Crips in the United States but may not be derivatives of the founding American gangs. Asian, Latino and Tamil gangs also prevalent in the city.

Montreal: Some Haitian and Jamaican gangs:

The Reds - for Bloods; the Blues - for Crips.

Calgary and Edmonton: Self-named Asian gangs FOB (Fresh off the Boat, although many members born in Canada); FK (Fresh off the Boat Killers); Crazy Dragons, Crazy Dragon Killers.

Winnipeg: African street gang Mad Cowz; aboriginal gang Indian Posse.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

WHO Asia Pacific head calls on China to release bird flu samples

BEIJING (AP) - A senior World Health Organization official appealed to China to hand over samples of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying Friday that Beijing has failed to release any samples from its dozens of outbreaks in poultry this year.
WHO's Asia-Pacific director Shigeru Omi said that sharing virus samples is crucial to diagnosing new cases, and to developing a vaccine that could prevent a possible pandemic in humans. China's Ministry of Agriculture shared five samples collected from infected birds last year but has failed to provide any this year, Omi said.

"From the more than 31 reported outbreaks in animals from 2005, no (Chinese) viruses have been made available so far for the international community," Omi said. "Time is of the essence."

China's Ministry of Health agreed this week to give the WHO samples isolated from two of its six confirmed human cases of bird flu.

Jia Youling, director of the Chinese Agriculture Ministry's veterinary bureau, which has led China's efforts against bird flu, declined to respond to Omi's remarks. He referred questions to his ministry's press office, which did not return phone calls.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing, Omi contrasted China's behaviour with that of Vietnam, which has made samples from its poultry cases available to WHO scientists.

"If the pandemic starts due to the virus from Vietnam we are prepared," Omi said. "But if the pandemic emerges due to a virus circulating in China, we are not yet prepared for that."

China reported its sixth human case of bird flu last week.

It has confirmed two human deaths and a suspected case in a 12-year-old girl who died. It has reported 26 outbreaks in poultry since Oct. 19.

The H5N1 strain has killed at least 71 people in Asia since 2003.

Scientists have determined that bird flu strains in Vietnam and Thailand resemble each other, while a distinct second strain has affected birds in China and Indonesia.

A potential third strain may have affected birds and sickened at least one human in northeast China's Liaoning province, Omi said.

"The outcome of this battle in China has ramifications not only for the region but also for the entire world," he said. "Maybe in China there are two sub-strains, maybe more. We don't know."

Alongside his critique, Omi praised the country for controlling and containing bird flu.

China has mounted an aggressive campaign against the disease, destroying millions of birds and starting a program to vaccinate all of its 5.2 billion chickens, ducks and other poultry. The government says the effort is nearly complete.

But Omi cautioned that vaccinations are "not a magic bullet," and have only a 70 to 80 per cent effectiveness rate.


China has also established a nationwide network of officials to raise awareness of bird flu symptoms and report on new cases.

Omi urged China to spend more money on disease education and surveillance in rural areas.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Venezuela expands in Asia, boosts oil shipments to Singapore, China

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela sent more than 5.35 million barrels of oil to Singapore and China in December in an effort to expand further into Asian markets, Venezuela's state oil company said. Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, said it shipped 3.45 million barrels of fuel oil to Singapore and 1.9 million barrels of crude to China in three supertankers on Dec. 12 and 13.

The shipments were "part of a commercial policy of market diversification," PDVSA said in a statement.

Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, has sought to reduce its dependency on the United States as the leading buyer of its oil and expand into new markets, particularly in Asia.

Earlier this week, PDVSA director Asdrubal Chavez said crude exports to China reached 140,000 barrels a day at the end of 2005. Venezuela hopes to more than double that to 300,000 barrels a day.

Venezuela also plans to expand its fleet of oil tankers wants to build pipelines with access to the Pacific Ocean so that it can ship more oil and gas to Asian countries.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Exporters cheer as first shipment of Canadian beef leaves for Japan

CALGARY (CP) - Canadian beef will soon be on Japanese plates, after the first shipment in 30 months left Alberta on Thursday bound for Asia's largest beef marketplace. About 3.4 tonnes of beef was sent from the Cargill Foods plant in High River and is set for arrival Friday in Narita, Japan.

"Within 24 to 48 hours the Japanese consumers should be tasting Canadian beef once again," said Cargill spokesman Robert Meijer.

Japan banned Canadian beef in May 2003 after the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as mad cow disease, in a cow in Alberta. That ban was partially lifted Dec. 12, when officials agreed to allow meat from animals under 21 months back into the Japanese market.

BSE has not been detected in any animals that young.

Thursday's shipment is being imported by a Japanese supermarket chain operating 66 retail outlets in Tokyo. The meat will be the feature attraction Tuesday and Wednesday at a Canadian Beef Fair, where consumers will be offered samples and Canada's beef safety practices will be highlighted.

A second shipment of 1.8 tonnes of meat is to leave Canada over the weekend from Better Beef in Guelph, Ont., another Cargill plant.

Japan historically imported up to 900,000 tonnes of beef a year. Prior to BSE, Canada was gaining a foothold in that market. In 2002, Canada exported 23,971 tonnes of beef to Japan, worth $96 million.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Hawaiian crooner Don Ho says stem cell procedure saved him

HONOLULU (AP) - Legendary Hawaiian crooner Don Ho said he could barely walk, let alone sing, and would've been a "goner" if he didn't have an experimental stem cell procedure on his ailing heart earlier this month in Thailand. Ho, known for his signature tune Tiny Bubbles, said Wednesday he has experienced a remarkable recovery and hopes to return to the stage soon. "I'm feeling terrific, 100 per cent better," Ho said in one of the first interviews since his Dec. 6 surgery.

"I'm ready to go but I've got to listen to the doctors."

"When they say my heart is strong enough to get excited, I'm on."

The 75-year-old Ho had a new treatment that hasn't been approved in the United States. It involves multiplying stem cells taken from his blood and injecting them into his heart in hopes of strengthening the organ.

"It was my last hope," said Ho, who suffers from non-ischemic cardiomyopathy - a weakened heart muscle not due to blockages in the coronary arteries.

He was among the first patients selected for the VesCell adult stem cell therapy, which was supervised by Dr. Amit Patel, a heart surgeon from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

The experimental procedure was developed by TheraVitae Co., which has offices in Thailand and laboratories in Israel, where Ho's stem cells were sent to be multiplied. The surgery costs roughly $30,000 US.

Ho discovered the procedure on the Internet, as his heart and health continued to deteriorate.

"I knew that if I didn't take things into my own hand, I would've been a goner," he said.

Before the surgery, Ho said his heart was operating at only 25 per cent and he would tire very easily, just walking or sitting up.

"You can't fight Mother Nature. When you reach a certain age and you don't really take care of yourself, then she's going to give you a little signal," Ho said.

His former fast-paced lifestyle may also have contributed to his condition. Ho has entertained tourists for more than four decades and hosted the The Don Ho Show on ABC from 1976-77.

"I've never been known to be like Mr. Health," Ho said.

"Have a drink every night, maybe I might cheat and take one extra bite when I shouldn't at the table. All that kind of stuff."

Ho, who has suffered from heart problems for about a year, had a pacemaker implanted a few months ago.

In August, he was admitted to a Honolulu hospital with shortness of breath. He was treated for an abnormal heart rhythm and released after three days. He soon returned to his Waikiki show on a reduced schedule.

Ho said his perspective on life has changed dramatically since the procedure. He now savours all the little things in life, like watching his children decorate the Christmas tree.

And he doesn't have any plans of quitting any time soon.

"A lot of people out there come every year to get their Tiny Bubbles fix," he said.
"So as long as they keep coming, I might as well keep doing it.
"I retired about 40 years ago. I'm just having fun."

© The Canadian Press, 2005

China becomes net auto exporter, with Geely, Chery leading the way

BEIJING (AP) - China says it has become a net exporter of cars and trucks for the first time, with new Chinese competitors such as Geely Group and Chery Automotive starting to win market share in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Exports jumped by 133.5 per cent in the first 10 months of this year, giving China an export surplus of 7,000 vehicles, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Beijing has been promoting the growth of its automakers in recent years as foreign suppliers expand in China, which is expected to become the world's biggest car market.

The report Wednesday by Xinhua didn't give detailed figures for China's auto exports.

But Michael Dunne, president of Beijing-based consulting firm Automotive Resources Asia, said China's exports in 2005 would probably reach about 125,000 units.

Some 20 to 25 per cent of that total is likely to be made up of vehicles made by Chery and Geely, two Chinese brands that sell abroad for less than $10,000 US, said Dunne.

"Chinese automobile manufacturers are facing an increasingly competitive market at home," he said. "They are high-volume producers. To compete and survive, they need to export worldwide."

Geely's two mainland Chinese auto companies - Zhejiang Geely Automobile Co. and Shanghai Maple Guorun Automobile - sold a total of 96,683 sedans in 2004, up 27 per cent from 2003.

The company says it has just over a four per cent share of China's market for passenger cars.

Chery has announced plans with American entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin's Visionary Vehicles to market cars in the United States and says it hopes eventually to sell two million vehicles a year.

The company plans to begin offering five models in the United States starting in 2007, including a compact sedan and an SUV.

Africa, Asia and the Middle East are the main markets for Chinese exports, with Syria and Algeria the largest of all.

An exception to that trend is Ukraine, where low-priced Chinese models sell well, Dunne said.

Outside of Geely and Chery, China's 2005 exports were "bread box" vehicles - pickup truck lookalikes made by companies such as Chang An and Hafei, Dunne said. He said these vehicles have $2,000 to $4,000 price tags at home, where sales are concentrated in relatively poor areas, away from big eastern cities.

China's domestic auto sales now total about five million vehicles per year, with most foreign brands manufactured locally or assembled from imported parts.

Imported cars are primarily high-end models such as the Mercedes S-Class, the BMW 7 and the Lexus, which start at around $50,000.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

New threats of violence in Indonesia

(CBC) - Thousands of security forces are on guard across Indonesia amid threats that al-Qaeda-linked militants were planning attacks over the holiday period.

Maj. Gen. Firman Gani, Jakarta's police chief, said Jemaah Islamiyah militants might try to retaliate for the death of bomb-making expert Azahari Husin, who was gunned down in a police raid last month.

Azahari's accomplice, Noordin Mohammad Top, remains on the loose. Both men were key members of Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for a string of attacks, including the 2002 bombing on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

Jemaah Islamiyah is a militant group dedicated to establishing a Muslim fundamentalist state in the region.

Documents uncovered at Azahari's hideout in the East Java resort town of Batu indicated attacks over Christmas and New Year were being planned, said police.

On its website, the U.S. Embassy posted a message this week warning of the "continued serious security threat" to Americans and other westerners in Indonesia.

Indonesian authorities have recently warned of the possibility that terrorists may be planning to kidnap foreigners over the Christmas and New Year holidays, the embassy said.

Services held in Thailand to mark tsunami anniversary

(CBC) - The first memorials for the victims of last December's earthquake and tsunami have been held in Thailand.

Hundreds of other memorials are scheduled to take place in the Southeast Asian countries that were affected.

Most are set for Dec. 26, one year after the disaster killed at least 216,000 people and left several million others homeless.

More than 1,000 people, including tsunami survivors and relatives of the dead, gathered at dusk Saturday at Khao Lak.

The high-end resort beach, located on the southwest coast, is where most of the Thai victims of the tsunami perished.

As some Moken sea gypsies chanted and drummed, others pushed a boat laden with incense, candles and flowers into a calm sea.

The Moken, who are nomadic fishermen, believe the ceremony will fend off evil spirits.

The tsunami killed about 5,400 people in Thailand alone, including more than 2,000 foreigners.

- Britons, Norwegians honour dead on Phuket Island -

Memorials for them were also held about 50 kilometres south of Khao Lak on Saturday, on Phuket Island.

About 150 Norwegians gathered for a service in the garden of a church near Kata Beach to remember the 84 Norwegian citizens who died in the country.

On a terrace at a hotel on Patong beach, several dozen Britons prayed and observed a moment of silence in honour of the 137 of their countrymen who died or went missing in the tsunami.

Thai officials expect at least 10,000 people to attend ceremonies that will be held on Monday in the six southern provinces hit by the tsunami.

Memorials are also planned in other countries, including India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, which bore the brunt of the disaster.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to join about 10,000 people for a prayer service at a mosque in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province.

The United Nations estimates that the earthquake and tsunami killed at least 223,000 people, destroyed almost 400,000 homes and left more than two million people homeless.

About $13.6 billion in aid money has been pledged by governments and individuals around the world, but reconstruction efforts have been slow in many places.

As of March 9, 2005, 15 Canadians were officially listed as dead in the disaster.

Canadians living longer, StatsCan reports

(CBC) - Life expectancy for women and men hit a record high in 2003 and the number of deaths increased as well, Statistics Canada said in a report Wednesday.

Statistics Canada says the country's population also grew by one per cent in 2003.

For women, life expectancy at birth was up 0.3 years, reaching a record high of 82.4 years.

Men were also living longer, Statistics Canada says. Their life expectancy at birth was 77.4 years, an increase of 0.2 years.

Considered together, the gap between male and female life expectancy widened slightly in 2003 from 4.9 years in 2002 to 5.0 years.

In terms of a regional breakdown, life expectancy in 2003 for both sexes combined was highest in British Columbia at 80.8 years and Ontario 80.2. Nunavut had the lowest life expectancy for both sexes, at 68.5, although the agency cautions that northern numbers maybe less accurate because of the small population base involved in the calculation.

In terms of deaths, 226,169 people died in Canada in 2003. That was an increase of 1.2 per cent from the year before. The population of Canada also increased by 1 per cent in 2003.

The number of deaths increased everywhere in Canada, except in Prince Edward Island, Quebec and the Yukon, where it declined.

The infant mortality rate declined slightly in 2003 to 5.3 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2003 from 5.4 deaths in 2002.

Japan, South Korea, hit by snowstorm

(CBC) - Heavy snow has blanketed large parts of Japan and South Korea, killing at least 13 people and bringing chaos to roads and airports in both countries.

The severe weather has been blamed for at least 10 deaths in Japan and three in South Korea.

In Japan, in the northern prefecture of Niigata, snow is piled as high as 184 centimetres. A power company says power was cut to 650,000 homes and businesses in the prefecture at one point.

About 1,000 traffic lights went out in Niigata city and most trains in the prefecture were halted temporarily due to the outage.

In the western prefecture of Fukui, two nuclear power plants automatically stopped operations due to technical problems caused by the heavy snowfalls. More snow is expected in the coming days.

In South Korea, several thousand troops have been deployed to clear highways and remove snow from the roofs of structures to prevent their collapse. There has also been severe damage reported in southern coastal regions where up to a metre of snow has fallen in two weeks.

In some areas, people are being evacuated from homes showing signs of collapse under the weight of snow.

Officials say, so far, the damage is estimated at $150 million US.

Diamond-studded Christmas cake on sale at Tokyo store

TOKYO (AP) - The economy is finally picking up, and Tokyoites are in a spending mood this winter. So how better to celebrate Christmas than with a diamond-studded cake worth about $2 million Cdn? The sparkling pink creation, which went on sale Tuesday at Takashimaya Department Store in central Tokyo, "has already received many inquiries" from prospective customers, said store spokesman Takeshi Morinaka.

A total of 223 diamonds - including a five-carat, heart-shaped stone - adorn the double-layer, marzipan-coated fruitcake, designed by Tokyo-based sweets chef Jeong Hong-yong.

"It's entirely edible, except for the diamonds, of course," Morinaka said.

For those who can't afford the luxury, Takashimaya will be serving up a replica of the cake at a champagne party on Christmas Eve, he added.

The cake is on display at the store until Dec. 25.

The government on Monday said Japan's economy was continuing to recover from a more than a decade of stagnation, supported by private consumption and growing industrial production.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Exporter: U.S. will sell about 100,000 tonnes of beef in Japan next year

TOKYO (AP) - U.S. producers expect to export 100,000 tonnes of beef to Japan next year, just a third of what they sold before a 2003 ban on imports due to the mad cow scare, the head of the U.S. Meat Export Federation said Thursday. "I hope I'm wrong, I hope it's more than that," Philip Seng told reporters in Tokyo while unveiling plans for a public relations blitz to win back wary Japanese consumers. Seng said it would be at least three years before American exporters reach the 2003 level of about 300,000 tonnes of beef sold in Japan.

Japan partially lifted its two-year ban on U.S. beef imports on Dec. 12. The country had been the most lucrative export market for American beef before it was shut out in 2003 after the first case of mad cow disease was discovered in the U.S. herd.

The first shipment of U.S. beef in nearly two years arrived in Japan last week.

But American beef still faces a struggle in Japan, where consumers are particularly sensitive to safety concerns. Some restaurants are reluctant to market American meat until they are sure the public will be receptive.

Seng's export group hosted representatives of Japan's food industry Wednesday for a beef luncheon featuring some 130 kilograms of roast filet with gravy and filet with mushrooms in white sauce.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Vintage Disney animation discovered

(CBC) - A collection of vintage Disney animation cells, sketches and background pictures has been uncovered in a warehouse at a Japanese university.

About 250 pieces including works from Sleeping Beauty, Bambi, Fantasia and Cinderella were discovered at the building at Chiba University near Tokyo.

Also found was an original picture for Flowers and Trees, released in 1932 as the world's first Technicolour animated film and winner of the first Oscar for an animated short.

Disney spokesperson Erika Nakajim said the company was "truly surprised."

Walt Disney Co. of the U.S. donated the pictures to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo after they were on exhibit at some department stores in Japan around 1960.

According to university officials, in 1963 the museum gave the collection to Hidesabura Genta, a professor of engineering who was studying animation. After Genta's death, only a handful of faculty knew of the collection's existence.

The cache was re-discovered at a warehouse used by the university's engineering department. Chiba University officials said they are considering exhibiting the collection.

The Department of Information and Image Science at the university hopes to digitize the images.

Letter from China: Hollywood, you have a problem with Asians

Howard W. French
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2005
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/12/15/news/letter.php

SHANGHAI We've come a long way from the 1930s, when Warner Oland, a Swedish-born actor, played the clever but ever-humble Charlie Chan in a series of black-and- white detective movies marked by preposterous wardrobe and makeup jobs and goofy fortune-cookie English deliveries of Confucian-sounding aphorisms.

We've even come a long way since 2003, when Hollywood delivered "The Last Samurai," whose preposterousness had more to do with story line than production values. In that box office hit, amid the late 19th-century upheaval of the Meiji period, Japan's culture and very identity are saved by a noble white knight - a literally white knight from the United States, played by Tom Cruise, to whom befalls the task of teaching the Japanese emperor how to honor his country's rich past.

The year 2005 has bequeathed us yet another huge Hollywood production involving Asia, "Memoirs of a Geisha," which has taken the bold leap into the box office unknown by sparing its audience a Western lead. Here for the first time is a major Hollywood production about Asians in which the central cast is certifiably Asian.

The problem with "Geisha" is that it has cast the wrong Asians in its leading roles, specifically placing three major ethnic Chinese actresses in the role of geisha, one of Japan's most rarefied cultural products.

For viewers in East Asia, home to a huge slice of the human population and to several of the world's largest and most dynamic economies, Japan and China at the very top of the list, this is anything but a minor detail.

Indeed, "Geisha" has proven itself that powerful and rare catalyst, uniting armies of movie fans and online commentators in East Asia's two giants, countries more typically at each other's throats recently over matters of history and competing territorial claims.

Critics in both countries have had their reasons to complain. In China, where the word geisha is usually written with a character that means prostitute, there has been nationalist outrage that one of the country's most popular young stars, Zhang Ziyi, plays the role of Sayuri, a village girl turned geisha who becomes the love interest of a powerful Japanese man during the years of war between the two countries. The Japanese practice of employing women in occupied countries like China and Korea as sex slaves for the entertainment of its troops is still a matter of living memory, and for some Chinese moviegoers this fact alone will make the film's casting too hard to swallow.

For Japanese, the motives for dissatisfaction are more complicated. In their language, geisha means skilled person, and rarely has a title been more apt. Young women must spend years in strict training to become a geisha, re-learning how to play traditional instruments like the samisen, but also to dance, walk, bow, smile, speak and even laugh.

None of this would have come naturally to a modern Japanese cast, but neither would they have been starting from absolute zero.

"Geisha's" Chinese actresses, by contrast, reportedly spent a six-week crash course for their roles, learning, among other things, how to speak Japanese-accented English. And although it is no fault of the cast, the movie has dispensed with some of the most distinctive characteristics of the geisha, from the heavy white makeup that transforms their faces into perfect masks, to their elaborately tied hair.

Surprising compromises also turn up in Zhang's dance performance, which bears no similarity to anything a geisha would do.

Even before "Geisha" was released, some movie critics and film industry people had struck pre-emptively, in effect dismissing critics of the movie's cultural accuracy as bad sports and people with no sense of humor.

While the movie's director, Rob Marshall, has defended his casting choices, saying that he focused on the best available talent, not on nationality, others have said in effect, why get hung up on such minor details when there is a spectacle to be enjoyed? Some indeed have gone so far as to say an American audience is unlikely to be able to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese in the first place, and even less likely to care.

It may come as a surprise to people with this mindset, but East Asians do not tend to find that Koreans, Chinese and Japanese look alike. Nor for that matter do many outsiders who spend much time in this part of the world.

What does it really mean, though, to say that accurately capturing even basic cultural details in a movie that is actually all about culture, a distinguished foreign culture, is not important, or that the ethnicity of an actor in what is essentially a period piece from another culture doesn't matter?

Seen against the backdrop of what Hollywood has done with Asians in the past, from the sputtering, fake-bucktoothed Mickey Rooney impersonating a certain idea of Chinese people in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to Harold Sakata, the speechless butler/villain named Oddjob in the James Bond movie "Goldfinger," to the recently deceased Pat Morita, the Mr. Miyagi character in the "Karate Kid" series who served as the television industry's all-purpose Asian - Chinese, Korean or Japanese, according to the needs of the script - it is hard to escape the conclusion there are real and serious problems here.

To be absolutely truthful, the problem goes beyond Hollywood, and beyond Asia, too. It has to do with long-ingrained attitudes involving how the West sees itself and how it sees the rest of the world - the one high, the other low.

This same reflexive disregard was on display during the Iraq war-related "uranium from Africa" controversy, where few in politics or in the press could bring themselves to say the name of the country concerned - Niger. Africa was specific enough.

Although it may not be well-advised, it is still safe to treat Africa this way, as an undifferentiated blob, a backdrop for tragedy or adventure, according to our humors. Africa, weak, poor and riven, is not about to strike back. Asia, however, is a different matter.

The last century of bitter, bloody history between Japan and China has been closely related to a struggle by Asians to recover their dignity vis-á-vis the West. The coming century may not exactly be Chinese, as some have predicted, but it will almost certainly be in a significant sense Asian, and for Western audiences, a little more familiarity and attention to detail now couldn't hurt.

North Korean firm says it has developed anti-smoking candy

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A North Korean drug firm claims to have developed a candy that suppresses the desire to smoke cigarettes and heals smoking-related diseases.
The white, round candy removes nicotine from the body, "lifts the love of cigarettes without adverse effects, improves the immunity and heals the diseases caused by cigarettes," Korea Pugang Pharmaceutic Co., Ltd. said on its English-language website.

The firm said the candy is made from "rare medicinal herbs" collected from the mountains of northern North Korea in accordance with a therapy pioneered by an ancient Korean herb doctor.

For years, North Korea has been staging an anti-smoking campaign, with leader Kim Jong Il calling smokers one of the "three main fools of the 21st century," along with people ignorant of music and computers.

Experts in South Korea estimate more than 40 per cent of North Korea's 22 million people light up regularly, compared with about 33 per cent in the South. Considering it's rare for North Korean women to smoke, the smoking rate among male adults is believed to be much higher.

According to the website, the company won a patent for the anti-smoking candy in February this year.

The order form available at the website is written in both English and Korean but doesn't give a price.

The Pyongyang-based company asks those who want to buy the product to contact its headquarters and its branch offices around the world, from China and Japan to Indonesia, Vietnam and Cuba and Zimbabwe.

Korea Pugang Pharmaceutic Co., Ltd: http://www.pugangpharma.com/

Tony Blair: China destined to become the world's 'dominant' economy

LONDON (AP) - China is destined to be the world's dominant economy and it is likely to be involved in future economic summits, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday.
Speaking at a news conference, Blair said it was inevitable that China would overtake Britain as the world's fourth-largest economy.

"At some point I'm afraid the Chinese economy is going to overtake not just Britain but Japan, Germany and, eventually, the United States. That's just the way it is," Blair said.

"The Chinese economy is going to be the dominant force in driving everything," he said. "That's why you've got higher oil prices, higher commodity prices. As the Chinese economy grows that's why climate change is so important."

The Group of 8 summit partners would have to agree on any move to expand to include India and China, he said.

However, he added, "I would find it hard to imagine we were going to have future G-8 summits in which they weren't, in some shape or form, participating."

© The Canadian Press, 2005

South Korea decides to talk with United States on resuming beef imports

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea said Monday it would begin talks with the United States to resume beef imports following a two-year ban sparked by fears of mad cow disease. The decision would mark the first step in reopening what had been the third-largest market for American beef. It follows last week's announcement by an advisory committee that banned U.S. beef could be considered safe to eat if stronger inspection and quarantine measures are taken.

"We notified the U.S. of our decision today," said Chang Ki-yoon, an official at the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry. "It's up to the U.S. when the talks will begin."

The U.S. undersecretary of agriculture for farm and foreign agricultural services, J.B. Penn, will discuss scheduling the beef talks Tuesday during a stopover in Seoul on his way back from a World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong, officials said. Penn is to meet South Korean Vice Agriculture Minister Lee Myung-soo.

At the planned talks, the two countries will discuss specific import conditions, such as designating U.S. slaughter houses allowed to process beef going to South Korea, officials said.

South Korea slapped the ban on U.S. beef imports in December 2003 after a Holstein cow in the U.S. state of Washington tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease. South Korea has so far rebuffed repeated U.S. requests to end the ban, citing health and safety concerns.

Before the ban, South Korea had been the third-largest market for U.S. beef exports. In 2002, the country imported 193,000 tonnes of U.S. beef worth $610 million US, according to the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

Japan, which had a similar ban, eased its ban on U.S. and Canadian beef Monday last week after two years of negotiations and a lengthy approval process.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Toyota may overtake GM in 2006

(CBC) - Toyota Motor Corp. may well become the world's largest automaker next year, as it slowly cuts into the U.S. and world markets of General Motors.

But Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe shrugged off such accolades at a speech at the company's headquarters in Nagoya, Japan on Tuesday, saying his company just provides what the customer wants.

"We try to prepare our production and sales to respond to customer needs in every region," he told Associated Press. "I am not thinking much about whether we will become No. 1 in the world as a result of that."

Whatever his motivation, the bottom line is that Toyota expects to make 9.06 million vehicles in 2006, a 10-per-cent increase from the 8.25 million vehicles that it will make this year.

Those numbers include its subsidiaries, Hino and Daihatsu. But even without them, Toyota is forecasting production of 8.11 million vehicles in 2006, up 10 per cent from 7.37 million vehicles in 2005.

Those numbers put Toyota neck and neck with GM.

GM does not provide full-year production targets, but it built 6.7 million vehicles during the first three quarters of this year and expects to produce about nine million vehicles by year end.

But Toyota has been growing while GM has been stumbling, losing market share to Toyota and its Japanese rivals.

GM's U.S. market share fell to 26.2 per cent in the first 10 months of this year, compared with 33 per cent a decade ago. And GM has been losing a lot of money, $1.6 billion US in the third quarter, with more losses expected by year end.

GM is restructuring its operations in a bid to keep up with the competition. It plans to close 12 plants by 2008 with the loss of 30,000 jobs, or 27 per cent of its North American manufacturing payroll.

A GM spokesman was not immediately available.

Chinese chemical slick nears Russian city

(CBC) - Authorities have cut water supplies to part of the Russian city of Khaborovsk to protect people from a chemical spill that originated in China.

The toxic slick of benzene was first reported in the Songhua River of neighbouring China in late November.

It's now thought to be in the Amur River, and officials in eastern Russia say it will likely affect the water for the city of 580,000 by Thursday.

About 10,000 people in three southern districts of Khaborovsk woke Wednesday to find notices posted outside their apartment blocks with a list of hazardous chemicals that could end up in the water supply.

The notice warned them not to try to siphon hot water from radiators.

The decision to restrict water was based on tests of the Amur River that showed benzene, but in concentrations within the maximum allowable levels.

About 100 tonnes of benzene were dumped into the Songhua River after a Nov. 13 explosion at a Chinese petrochemicals plant.

Benzene poisoning can cause kidney and liver damage, anemia and other blood disorders. Chronic exposure has been linked to cancer.

Canada's top court says clubs with group sex, swapping are legal

OTTAWA (CP) - The Supreme Court of Canada says Canadian standards will tolerate sex clubs featuring group sex and partner swapping amid spectators. Ruling on two similar Montreal cases that went in opposite directions in the provincial appeals court, the justices say the test for indecency is the harm it causes, not simply community standards.

The 7-2 decision says group sex or partner swapping in a private club doesn't cause harm to society and shouldn't be criminal.

The cases involve two swingers clubs in Montreal that allowed sex acts, including swapping.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Surprising Sexual Stereotypes

Vancouver East Cultural Centre and PuSh present the premiere of Theatre Replacement’s
Sexual Practices of the Japanese
Written by Maiko Bae Yamamoto, James Long, Manami Hara and Hiro Kanagawa

“James Long and Maiko Bae Yamamoto are two of the most talented young theatre artists in the city.” Jerry Wasserman

Theatre Replacement returns to the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, with Sexual Practices of the Japanese, running January 24 – 28 at 8pm at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre.

A scintillating peek into the world of common sexual stereotypes surrounding Japanese culture, this sometimes-irreverent trilogy takes us from a young woman’s groping experience on the super-express train to Yokohama in CHIKAN (Pervert), to the brink of an office-born love affair in an infamous Tokyo LOVE HOTEL, to obsessions with Seattle Mariners star fielder and Japanese icon Ichiro Suzuki in FAN. Sexual Practices of the Japanese finds inspiration in the place where the traditional and modern meet, in the blurry space between our perceptions and expectations.

Founded in 2003, Theatre Replacement builds, produces and tours unique small-scale chamber works. Artistic Directors James Long and Maiko Bae Yamamoto are both graduates of Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, and are two of the original co-founders of Boca del Lupo. Theatre Replacement’s inaugural production, The Empty Orchestra, premiered as a satellite performance at the 2005 PuSh Festival. A few months later, the company produced Broiler, written and performed by James Long, as part of Rumble Production’s The Young & The Restless Series.

Sexual Practices of the Japanese is directed by James Long and Maiko Bae Yamamoto, with sound design by in house designer Veda Hille (The Empty Orchestra) and Lee Hutzulak, costume design by Barbara Clayden and lighting design by Jonathan Ryder. Performances by Maiko Bae Yamamoto, Manami Hara and Hiro Kanagawa.

Sexual Practices of the Japanese runs January 24 – 28 at 8pm at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Take in a post-show talk on Wednesday, January 25. Tickets for the show are $20 or $15 for students and seniors (plus service charges), and are available from Ticketmaster at 604.280.3311 or www.ticketmaster.ca. You can see Sexual Practices of the Japanese with your PuSh Pass, which gives you four tickets to any PuSh shows* for $64 inclusive. PuSh Passes are also valid for a discount at the door for any satellite show. To purchase a pass, call 604.709.9973 or email info@touchstonetheatre.com.

For more information on the PuSh Festival, pick up a brochure or visit www.pushfestival.ca.

*The PuSh Pass does not include tickets for Kronos Quartet with special guest Tanya Tagaq. However, priority seating is available for passholders until January 10th only. Seating is subject to