03.10.10, 10:18 PM EST
By KELLY OLSEN, Associated PressSEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea's central bank left its key interest rate at a record low Thursday amid international sovereign debt concerns and as the institution prepares for a leadership change.
The Bank of Korea said it kept the benchmark seven-day repurchase rate at 2 percent. The decision came at the last monetary policy meeting chaired by outgoing Gov. Lee Seong-tae.
In the winter, the port of Vladivostok is kept open by icebreakers like this.
Dalian Railway Station (Dalian Zhan) is in the center of town, opposite Shengli Guangchang (Victory Square). located in the bustling commercial center near Qingniwaqiao.
Portrait of Paul I by Borovikovsky Vladimir
Throughout his life, Russian Emperor Paul I was afraid of being poisoned, particularly during the time he was still a successor to the throne. Disfavored by his mother Catherine the Great to be the one to take the crown, Paul even had a chef from England preparing his meals. But it was not poisoning that ended his life on the night of 11 March 1801.
It was Russia’s high society; Counts Palen and Benigsen, Dukes Zubov and Volkonsky, and General Uvarov did not accept Paul as the ruler of the country and planned a coup. At first their plan was to arrest Paul and force him to give up the throne in favor of his son, but things took a different turn.
Drunk on champagne, the conspirators arrived at St. Michael’s Palace, where the emperor resided, knocking down objects and servants on their way. Paul had heard them coming down the corridor to his rooms and tried to escape through the door that lead to his wife’s private rooms, but it was locked. So he dashed for the window and hid behind the curtain.
Not finding the emperor in his bed, the conspirators panicked. They thought their plot has been discovered and this could be a trap, but Count Palen approached the bed and as he touched the sheets, exclaimed “the nest is still warm, the bird cannot be far.” They searched the room and found Paul helpless in his nightgown.
After a short argument, a struggle began and Paul was hit in the head and fell to the floor. He was then beaten and choked with a scarf. For the rest of the night, a medic worked on Paul’s body to cover the bruises and make it look like a natural death. But despite the make up, the black and blue marks on Paul’s face could still be seen as he lay in his coffin. He was succeeded by his son Alexander I. It is believed that Alexander gave the conspirators his approval to carry out their plot to kill his father.
The Shabolovka TV tower
On 10 March 1939, the Shabolovka Radio and TV Broadcasting Center (it owes its name to its location on Shabolovka Street) began functioning on a regular basis. Occasional broadcasts, produced by temporary TV stations in Moscow, had already been occurring since 1931. Before it was replaced by the much larger and better-equipped Ostankino Center in 1967, Shabolovka had been the flag ship of Soviet broadcasting. The studio marked its birthday with the broadcast of a documentary on the opening session of the 18th Congress of the Communist Party. As of that moment, the station began broadcasting regularity four times a week, for two hours.
At that time, there were approximately 100 TV sets in Moscow. The first Soviet TV set was designed in 1932, but the most remembered and loved version, the KVN, wasn’t introduced until 1949. It had a tiny screen and the lens inside had to be filled with distilled water in order for it to function. The development of television technology was growing proportionally with skyrocketing interest in television broadcasting. The first color TVs appeared in the Soviet Union in 1967. To compare, in the United States, the first batch of color TVs was sold in 1954.
During WWII, broadcasting was interrupted, but Moscow was the first city in Europe to start broadcasting again after the war.
The Moscow Broadcasting Center on Shabolovka was birthplace of the Central Television Station of the USSR in 1951. Originally, Central Television had only one channel; it was broadcast occasionally, and its content varied each time from music, news or movies to cartoons for children. Only in the 1960s did Central Television add more channels.
The Shabolovka TV tower itself also deserves attention: 150 meters in height, the cone-shaped piece of art seems to be fashioned from fine steel lacework. It was built in 1921, and its creator, Vladimir Shukhov, an outstanding engineer and architect, planned to make it even taller, but the country ran out of steel. A most extraordinary and beautiful building, it is considered the symbol of the country’s television.
What's for lunch?: Siberian tigers, which evolution has fitted with protective "eye" markings on the back of their ears, need 8 kg of meat a day to survive. JOHN GOODRICH PHOTO
Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010
By PATRICK EVANS
After leaving Kolya's cabin, I visit the remote village of Krasny Yar on the River Bikin. This is one of just a handful of settlements in this vast region still partly inhabited by indigenous hunter tribes — the Udege and Nanai. The original Dersu tribe — whose eponymous member traveled with czarist Russian mapmaker and naturalist Vladimir Arsen'ev through this wilderness, and later figured in the title of Akira Kurosawa's 1975 film, "Dersu Uzala," about those explorations — was closely related to the Udege. Many so-called Northern Peoples were killed or deported during the years of repression under Josef Stalin. The Udege now number only 2,000.
In Krasny Yar an ambitious World Wildlife Fund project aimed at protecting the Bikin drainage, which contains some of the world's richest old-growth forest, is already nine months into a three-year plan. The project, worth some ¥144 million, is helping local people establish forms of income from nontimber-derived products such as eco-tourism and textiles. Unfortunately, though, it is beset with controversy.
The head of Krasny Yar, Vladimir Shirkov, represents the project on behalf of the village. According to a number of local residents, he is also masterminding local illegal logging operations on the Bikin. The WWF's man on the ground, Ivan Rogov, says his organization is planning expeditions to gather evidence to help prevent violations in the sector. During a day out in the forest with a young Nanai hunter, I see evidence immediately: big trucks heading deep into the forest along well-worn trails. The following day, I see trucks leaving the forest fully laden.
The WWF project is set to last until 2011, after which, unless more funding comes in, the Udege and other people of Krasny Yar will have to fend for themselves among the corruption that continues to eat away at their dwindling ancient resource.
To find out more about the ongoing WWF project in the Bikin drainage system, visit www.panda.org
Svetlana Alliluyeva
Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, was on a trip to India to bring her late husbands Brajesh Singh’s ashes back to his native land when, on 9 March 1967, she formally petitioned for political asylum at the US Embassy in New Delhi. She moved to the United States and became a citizen, causing an international uproar.
Svetlana grew up amid troubled times in her country. Her mother committed suicide when she was only six years old leaving Svetlana mostly in the care of nannies, while her father, Stalin, ruled the mighty USSR and his daughter’s life as well. Svetlana wanted to pursue a degree in languages, but instead, she was enrolled to study history, according to her father’s wishes. Her love life was under control as well. Svetlana’s first romance with Aleksey Kaplin ended when Stalin sentenced Aleksey to a Siberian labor camp.
During the war Svetlana married her school friend Grigory Morozov with whom she had a son, Joseph. Stalin was against their union and they were divorced in 1947. Stalin then chose a husband for his daughter – Yari Zhdanov, the son of his right hand man, Andrey Zhdanov. But for Svetlana it was a marriage without love and not long after the birth of their daughter Ekaterina, their marriage dissolved.
Disappointed by two failed marriages, Svetlana met an Indian student, Brajesh Singh, in 1963. Singh, a young communist, was a translator at a foreign language publishing house. Svetlana was a lecturer at the University of Moscow at the time. Singh was her most sincere and long-lasting love, but he suffered from an incurable illness and died in her arms in 1967. Svetlana was allowed to travel to India to execute her husband’s last wish – to have his ashes delivered to his homeland.
In the United States, Svetlana married William Wesley Peters, an architect, and changed her name to Lana Peters. They had a daughter named Olga, but soon divorced. In 1982 she moved to London and later returned to the Soviet Union where she settled in Tbilisi. From here, she again moved to the United States where she currently resides in a retirement home.
Svetlana has not spoken to her children in Russia since she moved to the U.S. Her son Joseph lives in Moscow and willingly talks about his childhood memories while Ekaterina Zhdanova, who also lives in Russia, refuses to talk about her family. Svetlana’s youngest daughter, Olga, does not see her mother much either.
Kim Jong-il is known for his love of drinking and fine dining
Page last updated at 04:17 GMT, Monday, 8 March 2010
By Bethany Bell
BBC News, Vienna
A former North Korean colonel, Kim Jong-ryul, has described how he spent two decades shopping in Europe for the dictatorship in Pyongyang.
His story is the subject of a new book published in Austria, where the colonel says he has lived under cover since his defection in 1994.
Colonel Kim Jong-ryul says he spent 20 years doing business in Europe for the North Korean regime.
His story is told in a new book, At the Dictator's Service.
In the book, he says Vienna was one of his regular destinations - the hub for his shopping sprees.
He says he bought everything from spy technology and weapons to luxury goods like carpets, sidestepping the trade embargoes.
WHO IS KIM JONG-IL?
N Korea's "Dear Leader" is a reclusive character, at the centre of an elaborate personality cult
Succeeded his father Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea, who died in 1994
Mr Kim is seen in the West as both a master manipulator, and delusional madman
He has a reputation as a drinker, a playboy and a hypochondriac
The book describes the deep divide between the lavish lifestyles of North Korea's leaders - and the poverty of its people.Colonel Kim says it was this injustice that led him to fake his own death in 1994 and defect to Austria.
Now he says he is risking his life by going public.
He fears that the North Korean secret services will hunt him down and hurt his family back in North Korea.
But he says he has no regrets about breaking his silence.
Related Articles:
FROMMER’S:
Bangchui Dao was once the exclusive playground of Communist Party higher-ups and is now a pristine, hedge-lined country club only accessible by car (15 min.; ¥20/$2.60/£1.30). The city's nicest beach is a 30-minute walk past the gate (¥20/$2.60/£1.30).
Kim Young-kwang, 79, has been trying to find the remains of Ahn Jung-geun, who in 1909 killed Ito Hirobumi, the Japanese resident-general in Korea, then occupied by Japan. (John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times / March 7, 2010)
March 8, 2010
By John M. Glionna and Yuriko Nagano
Kim Young-kwang has spent years trying to locate the remains of the Korean nationalist who assassinated a Japanese statesman 100 years ago.
Reporting from Tokyo and Seoul - As a former South Korean intelligence agent, Kim Young-kwang knows all about subterfuge, secret documents and international intrigue.
But that's just soulless spy craft compared with what he considers the most engaging case of his life. It's a 100-year-old riddle that involves heroes from two nations, a Chinese prison, a Buddhist monk, a dose of Seoul politics--and a voice from the grave.
For more than two decades, Kim has traveled across the region to sift through yellowing archives, interview witnesses and amass a vault of evidence, all in hopes of answering a nagging question:
Where are the remains of Ahn Jung-geun?
On Oct. 26, 1909, the 30-year-old Korean nationalist walked into a crowded train depot in Harbin, China, and fired six shots at Japanese statesman Ito Hirobumi. Three of the bullets hit their mark; Ahn had killed the man he blamed for Imperial Japan's move to annex his homeland. Five months later, an unrepentant Ahn was hanged in a prison in Japanese-occupied northeastern China.
Before going to the gallows, Ahn asked that his body be returned to his native Korea, a request denied by his captors, according to Japanese diplomatic documents.
From there, the record fades. Papers kept by Ahn's captors are unclear about where his body was buried.
The uncertainty has kept alive visceral feelings among both Japanese and Koreans--about the assassination and Japan's 20th century record of imperialism. The emotions can't be put to rest, many feel, until Ahn receives a proper burial.
"This mystery is complicated because Ahn is such a polarizing historical figure," said Kim, now 79. "He is revered in Korea, but demonized in Japan."
As an agent in South Korea's Central Intelligence Agency, Kim never lost his appetite to solve his nation's biggest cold case, spending hours in libraries researching Ahn's troubled life.
Then, in 1987, as he began the last of three terms as a national lawmaker, Kim decided he wanted to see the prison where Ahn died. There was one problem: South Korea didn't have diplomatic relations with China at the time, so he couldn't get a visa.
But there was no stopping this old spy.
The man Ahn killed is considered the father of modern-day Japan. Ito established Japan's Cabinet system in 1885 and became the country's first prime minister, a post he held four times. In the early years of the 20th century, he served as his country's first resident-general in Korea, which was then a Japanese protectorate. For years, Ito's image graced the nation's 1,000-yen note.
Ahn, who was born in what is now North Korea, has mythic status of his own. Viewed as a martyr for Korean independence, he has been the subject of a film, play, musical and opera. He once cut off part of a finger in a pledge to avenge Japanese atrocities in Korea.
Kim's interest in Ahn dates to his youth. As a teenager, he played the lead role in a high school play about Ahn. Later, Kim began reading widely on the man he considers a political visionary. He became intrigued by the mystery surrounding Ahn's remains.
In 1987, tired of speculation, Kim decided to see whether he could find the grave himself.
Bribing a Chinese Foreign Ministry official in Hong Kong, he sneaked into China and managed to reach Lushun prison, near the northeastern city of Dalian, before being arrested and deported. "The only thing I accomplished was getting reprimanded by the Chinese," he said.
He would make nearly a dozen other forays across the border, visiting the prison and archives in nearby cities.
In 1989, he tried a different tack. He visited Ito's great-grandson in Japan and proposed that he meet and shake hands with Ahn's grandson. Kim hoped the publicity would draw attention to his cause and shake loose information about the location of Ahn's remains.
Ito agreed to the meeting, but Ahn's grandson, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, refused, Kim said. The grandson did not respond to requests for an interview.
Kim Young-kwang, 79, has been trying to find the remains of Ahn Jung-geun, who in 1909 killed Ito Hirobumi, the Japanese resident-general in Korea, then occupied by Japan. (John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times / March 7, 2010)
March 8, 2010
By John M. Glionna and Yuriko Nagano
Kim Young-kwang has spent years trying to locate the remains of the Korean nationalist who assassinated a Japanese statesman 100 years ago.
Reporting from Tokyo and Seoul - As a former South Korean intelligence agent, Kim Young-kwang knows all about subterfuge, secret documents and international intrigue.
But that's just soulless spy craft compared with what he considers the most engaging case of his life. It's a 100-year-old riddle that involves heroes from two nations, a Chinese prison, a Buddhist monk, a dose of Seoul politics--and a voice from the grave.
For more than two decades, Kim has traveled across the region to sift through yellowing archives, interview witnesses and amass a vault of evidence, all in hopes of answering a nagging question:
Where are the remains of Ahn Jung-geun?
On Oct. 26, 1909, the 30-year-old Korean nationalist walked into a crowded train depot in Harbin, China, and fired six shots at Japanese statesman Ito Hirobumi. Three of the bullets hit their mark; Ahn had killed the man he blamed for Imperial Japan's move to annex his homeland. Five months later, an unrepentant Ahn was hanged in a prison in Japanese-occupied northeastern China.
Before going to the gallows, Ahn asked that his body be returned to his native Korea, a request denied by his captors, according to Japanese diplomatic documents.
From there, the record fades. Papers kept by Ahn's captors are unclear about where his body was buried.
The uncertainty has kept alive visceral feelings among both Japanese and Koreans--about the assassination and Japan's 20th century record of imperialism. The emotions can't be put to rest, many feel, until Ahn receives a proper burial.
"This mystery is complicated because Ahn is such a polarizing historical figure," said Kim, now 79. "He is revered in Korea, but demonized in Japan."
As an agent in South Korea's Central Intelligence Agency, Kim never lost his appetite to solve his nation's biggest cold case, spending hours in libraries researching Ahn's troubled life.
Then, in 1987, as he began the last of three terms as a national lawmaker, Kim decided he wanted to see the prison where Ahn died. There was one problem: South Korea didn't have diplomatic relations with China at the time, so he couldn't get a visa.
But there was no stopping this old spy.
The man Ahn killed is considered the father of modern-day Japan. Ito established Japan's Cabinet system in 1885 and became the country's first prime minister, a post he held four times. In the early years of the 20th century, he served as his country's first resident-general in Korea, which was then a Japanese protectorate. For years, Ito's image graced the nation's 1,000-yen note.
Ahn, who was born in what is now North Korea, has mythic status of his own. Viewed as a martyr for Korean independence, he has been the subject of a film, play, musical and opera. He once cut off part of a finger in a pledge to avenge Japanese atrocities in Korea.
Kim's interest in Ahn dates to his youth. As a teenager, he played the lead role in a high school play about Ahn. Later, Kim began reading widely on the man he considers a political visionary. He became intrigued by the mystery surrounding Ahn's remains.
In 1987, tired of speculation, Kim decided to see whether he could find the grave himself.
Bribing a Chinese Foreign Ministry official in Hong Kong, he sneaked into China and managed to reach Lushun prison, near the northeastern city of Dalian, before being arrested and deported. "The only thing I accomplished was getting reprimanded by the Chinese," he said.
He would make nearly a dozen other forays across the border, visiting the prison and archives in nearby cities.
In 1989, he tried a different tack. He visited Ito's great-grandson in Japan and proposed that he meet and shake hands with Ahn's grandson. Kim hoped the publicity would draw attention to his cause and shake loose information about the location of Ahn's remains.
Ito agreed to the meeting, but Ahn's grandson, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, refused, Kim said. The grandson did not respond to requests for an interview.
By HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea and the U.S. kicked off annual military exercises Monday, a day after North Korea denounced the training as a rehearsal for invasion and threatened to attack the allies.
About 18,000 American soldiers and an undisclosed number of South Korean troops are taking part in 11 days of drills across South Korea, according to U.S. and South Korean militaries.
The exercises, dubbed Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, are aimed at rehearsing how to deploy U.S. reinforcements in time of an emergency on the Korean peninsula, U.S. military spokesman Kim Yong-kyu said.
The U.S. and South Korea argue the drills - which include live-firing by U.S. Marines, aerial attack drills and urban warfare training - are purely defensive. North Korea claims they amount to attack preparations and has demanded they be canceled.
The North's military warned Sunday that it would bolster its nuclear capability and break off dialogue with the U.S. in response to the drills.
It also said it would use unspecified "merciless physical force" to cope with them, saying it is no longer bound by the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
South Korea's military has been closely monitoring Pyongyang's maneuvers but hasn't seen any signs of suspicious activities by North Korean troops, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday.
Koh Yu-hwan, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, dismissed North Korea's statement as rhetoric. "The North's strong protest is not unusual as it also protested during previous drills," he said.
The training comes as the U.S. and other regional powers are pushing for the North to rejoin international disarmament talks on ending its atomic weapons program in return for aid. The North quit the six-nation weapons talks and conducted its second nuclear test last year, drawing tighter U.N. sanctions.
The North has demanded a lifting of the sanctions and peace talks with the U.S. on formally ending the Korean War before it returns to the negotiations. The U.S. and South Korea have responded the North must first return to the disarmament talks and make progress on denuclearization.
The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea.
__
Associated Press writer Kwang-tae Kim contributed to this report.
President Reagan delivers "Evil Empire" speech.
On 8 March 1983, in his speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Ronald Reagan introduced the term “evil empire” to describe the Soviet Union.
Reagan exhorted the audience to “pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness – pray they will discover the joy of knowing God.” He subjected the Soviet leaders to criticism, as the embodiment of the “darkness” and reproached the “aggressive impulses of the evil empire.”
The Soviet Union, for its part, accused the United States of being the center of imperialism, holding out for world domination; it was the Soviets’ duty to fight this in the name of communism.
In Moscow, the Soviet press agency TASS said the use of the words “evil empire” only proved that the Reagan administration “can think only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic anti-Communism.”
Reagan, however, genuinely believed that all he had done was call a spade a spade, the only right thing to do under the circumstances; any euphemisms would signal the concession of the free world to totalitarianism. His approach to the problem was vastly supported by conservatives, but was showered with criticism by pacifists. The latter viewed such an attitude as perfectly capable of triggering a nuclear war between the two superpowers.
The “evil empire” concept received a warm welcome in Europe, threatened by the strengthening of the Soviet foreign and domestic policies that General Secretary Yury Andropov* brought with him. In the USSR, Reagan’s formula was favored by the dissident movement, and particularly, by the academician Andrey Sakharov **. It was also popular among Soviet émigrés.
During his second term in office, three years after the phrase “evil empire” had first been pronounced, Reagan paid a visit to the new reformist General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, who took office in 1985. When asked by a reporter whether he still thought the Soviet Union was the “evil empire,” Reagan admitted that he no longer did. The time when he used the term was a “different era,” that is, the period before Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms. Still, throughout his career, Reagan’s antagonism against the Soviet regime, with its absence of democratic institutions, persisted.
*Yury Andropov – General Secretary of the Communist Party from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later. A hardliner and former head of the KGB, he is renowned for his brutal suppression of political dissidence.
**Andrey Sakharov – an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
March 7, 2010 4:36 a.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- Russian security forces killed eight militants that it said were connected to a 2009 terrorist attack, the head of Russia's domestic security and anti-terrorism agency said Saturday.
The Russian forces also detained 10 militants in connection with the 2009 attack, in a special operation in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia earlier this week, the head of the Russian security agency said.
In a televised meeting on Russia's state media, Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that the operation happened on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Bortnikov said that "DNA tests of the militants have been carried out to establish their involvement" in a November 2009 Moscow to St. Petersburg train derailment that killed 28 people and injured about 90 others.
Following that attack, the Federal Security Service examined this "illegal armed group" in Ingushetia, Bortnikov said, "which was justifiably suspected of this crime."
"Investigative measures helped us obtain more materials confirming this theory," he said.
Among those killed in this week's operation was Alexander Tikhomirov, also known as Said Buryatsky, a prominent rebel leader in Russia's North Caucasus. Russian investigators link Tikhomirov to Chechen separatist leader Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the 2009 train derailment.
According to the state-run RIA Novosti and ITAR TASS news agencies, Bortnikov said that police found an explosives laboratory and seized more than a ton of explosives -- including small arms and ammunition -- at the site of this week's special operation in Ingushetia.
Bortnikov said the site was in Ekazhevo, a village in Ingushetia's Nazran district.
State-run news media reports link Buryatsky's group to other large-scale attacks, including an assassination attempt on Ingushetia's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, in June 2009 and a suicide bombing that killed at least 20 policemen in Ingushetia last August.
CNN's Amir Ahmed contributing to this report.
RELATED TOPICS
An ideal woman is a careful mother, a housewife or an attractive mistress
VLADIVOSTOK, March 7, vladivostoktimes.com Russian people create an image of an ideal woman and chose the main features of her. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) reported it and presented the information about what qualities, according to Russians, an ideal mother, wife, mistress, lady friend, lady colleague, and lady boss should have.
Woman image is very diverse among Russians.
Thus, a good mother should be
An ideal wife should be
The image of an ideal mistress is different: she should be
Woman friend should be
The main quality for lady boss and lady colleague is
For lady boss ambition is more important than decency (41% and 31% respectively) but for lady colleague it is vice versa (31% and 41% respectively).
In comparison with the year 2001 Russians appreciate more
in mothers
in wives
in lady boss
in lady colleague.
Less important qualities are mistress’ temperament (from 39 to 30%), lady boss’ appearance (from 22 to 15%) and lady friend’s faithfulness (from 40 to 29%).
For men a woman’s appearance is very important but they appreciate less
A wife’s appearance is more important for men than for women (36 and 28% respectively), the same thing about a mistress (53 and 45% respectively), and lady colleague (20 and 14% respectively).
But women appreciate more than men decency and empathy of both lady friend (37 and 47% respectively, 41 and 54% respectively) and lady colleague (37 and 49% respectively, 11 and 19% respectively).
The research was made by VCIOM on February 27-28 of the year 2010. The respondents were 1600 people from 140 cities and villages in 42 areas, territories and republics of Russia. Statistical error is not more than 3.4%.
From 1958 to 1991, only Soviet citizens were allowed to live in Vladivostok or visit it (and even then had to obtain an official permission). Before this closure, the city had large Korean and Chinese populations. Some Koreans who were deported during Stalin's rule from the Russian Far East have since returned, particularly to Vladivostok.
Vladivostok has one of the largest Armenian communities in eastern Russia. There are a number of Armenian bakeries and restaurants in the city. There are also sizable communities of Chechens, Azeris and Tajiks in the city. According to the latest statistics, there are currently about 100,000 Muslims living in the Russian Far East.
The Soviet ice hockey team
On 7 March 1954 at the Royal stadium of Stockholm, Sweden, the Soviet ice hockey team beat Canada in the World Championships. The Canadians previously ruled the ice, but the Russians made their world debut with a glorious 7-2 win.
The Canadian team easily won their first six games of the championships and had to face the USSR in the final showdown. On March 7, the final day of the tournament, Canada needed only a tie to claim first place while the Russian team would have to win outright if they were to take home the gold medal. Once the game began, the Soviet team demonstrated their style of hockey which was extremely fast paced with precision passing.
A Canadian commentator had this to say about Russians’ performance: “Their slowest player skated more quickly than our fastest player. I don't know if I should say this or not, but they dominated us by more than the 5 goals margin.”
It was the international debut of the Soviet Union hockey team. The sensational victory was a major landmark, promoting hockey in Russia and a brining international recognition to the Soviet school of hockey. Russia proceeded to win 23 World Championships and eight Olympics gold medals.
March 6, 2010
Canadians are still basking in the glow of the Winter Olympics. But in Russia, which will host the next winter games, the mood is grim. Russian athletes performed like the Chicago Cubs in Vancouver, and the accusations are flying like shots into Ryan Miller's knee pads. Host Scott Simon talks to Tom Goldman about the week's sports news.
TRANSCRIPT:
SCOTT SIMON, host: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I’m Scott Simon and I wait all week for sports.
(Soundbite of music)
SIMON: Canadians are still basking in the golden glow of the Winter Olympics but in Russia, which will host the next Winter Games, the mood is grim. Russian athletes performed in Vancouver like the Chicago Cubs, and the accusations are flying like shots into Ryan Millers knee pads.
Back to the Olympics and joining us now is NPRs sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Morning, Tom.
TOM GOLDMAN: Good morning.
SIMON: So just three Russian gold medals in Vancouver. Terrible showing by their- terrible showing by Finlands standards - or Norways, at any rate, and when Vladimir Putin says people must be held responsible, does that mean off to the Gulag?
GOLDMAN: Or heads will roll, however you say that in Russian. This week, actually, the Russian president called for the Olympics sports officials to resign or be fired, and only one person has accepted the invitation so far; that’s the head of the Russian Olympic Committee. But Prime Minister Putin has been especially critical about the Olympic effort and very vocal about correcting the problems. He is a big sports fan and the driving force behind Russia winning the bid for the 2014 Winter Games, and he’s calling for wholesale changes in how his country trains and funds athletes as a way to, you know, for Russia to reclaim its past winter sports glory.
SIMON: I don’t know much about Sochi. I don’t know anything about Sochi except those guys dancing and the little silver balls that, you know, at the closing ceremony.
GOLDMAN: Right.
SIMON: But lets put it this way. It doesn’t come to mind, it doesn’t bring an image to mind the way Vancouver does.
GOLDMAN: Certainly doesn’t. Well, actually in the wrong ways. You remember all the rain and the warm weather Vancouver had? Some people say Sochi will be this times hundred. A very vocal critic of the efforts to locate the Games in the seaside resort of Sochi in Russia is a man called Boris Nemtsov. He’s the former deputy prime minister and the leader of the opposition to the Kremlin, and he has said that that Putin has found one of the only places in Russia where there is no snow in the winter and he describes Sochi as subtropical. So just a number of complaints and criticisms that include, you know, very slow progress in building there and the charges of corruption, which always seem to surface in Russia. Saying that there may be some real problems.
SIMON: NPRs sports correspondent, Tom Goldman. Thanks so much.
GOLDMAN: Youre welcome, Scott.
FROMMER’S:
For a less pretty but still interesting taste of modern Chinese architecture, head to Renmin Guangchang (1km/ 1/2 mile east of the railway station on Zhongshan Lu; bus: nos. 801 and 701). This large square, surrounded on three sides by ominous government buildings, is pleasant at night when lights illuminate the fountain.
Cutting through soft powder: “smoky snow,” as guide Noriyuki Watanabe calls it.
Published on Friday, Mar. 05, 2010 1:43PM EST Last updated on Friday, Mar. 05, 2010 4:35PM EST
Dave Ebner
A Japanese mountain range offers some magical backcountry
Hokkaido, Japan — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
The mountains of Daisetsuzan National Park explode from the earth, thrusting above plains painted lavender in summertime and thick white through the long stormy months of winter. At two colliding tectonic plates, this cluster of volcanic peaks stands sentinel at the heart of Hokkaido, the sparsely populated north island of Japan.
The Ainu, the local indigenous people, called this place kamui mintara, the playground of the gods.
Only a few hours from the international airport near Sapporo – and a world away from the Australian ski tourists who throng to the in-bounds slopes at the Niseko resort region of southeast Hokkaido –Daisetsuzan is a backcountry Eden.
Even for an ardent atheist, it's hard to resist the lure to embrace Japan's animist traditions, the belief that spirits imbue all things. Spirits seem to abound in Daisetsuzan, in the bountiful snow, cold sake and gnarled silver birch trees: effervescent, enchanting and fleeting.
Warm pleasures (and cold sake) await just off the slopes.
“In the morning, when the place is bathed in sunlight,” photographer Koetsu Ichinei writes, “the snow crystals sparkle, and the scene reminds me of fairy tales of trees dancing wildly in stories of Ainu folklore I listened to when I was a child.”
Even devotees of British Columbia's Rogers Pass will find themselves amazed by Daisetsuzan. Unlike at Rogers, though, there are hardly any other skiers as we dance through the silver birch, cutting deep through deliriously light fresh powder – “smoky snow,” as Noriyuki Watanabe, of Hokkaido Powder Guides, calls it. Like spirits.
Winter storms brew constantly to the west in Siberia, grow fierce and heavy with moisture over the Sea of Japan, and wallop the wall of Daisetsuzan's mountains.
The speed and constancy of the cycles is surreal; a night of swirling snow will ebb to midmorning sunshine, only to be ushered away by another whipping snowfall in the late afternoon. “I've never seen snow fall more, every day, twice a day. If this was Canada, it'd be a zoo,” my brother Markus remarks.
Tokachidake (dake means volcanic peak), an active volcano that last spewed in 1989, is 40 kilometres from the small farming town of Furano and offers the purest easily accessed backcountry terrain in the park. We are the first to forge through the forest to break trail for an ascent of Furanodake. We slog higher on the steep slope, cut a path amid wild arms of frozen dancers – the snow-covered silver birch.
The scale of these volcanic peaks is far less epic than the glaciated Selkirks of Rogers, where ascents can last hours and soar well more than a thousand metres of vertical gain. On Furanodake, we establish a circuit from the river to a ridge top of about 400 vertical metres and hammer five runs on one remarkable day.
On-mountain indulgences are bookended by complementary pleasures upon waking and in the evenings. At Tokachidake, at the end of the road, stands a nondescript three-storey white building: Ryounkaku is one of Japan's many traditional ryokans, inns where guests sleep on simple mattresses on tatami mats and soak in the restorative waters of onsen, the hot springs that bubble through fissures in Japan's long volcanic belt.
Ryounkaku has an excellent onsen, its water coloured rust by iron. But nearby there is a particularly wonderful onsen, the unadorned Fukiage, a short amble down a snowy path from the road. Spirits surely swirl in the steam as water percolates out of the earth amid a forest and falling snow.
Food, of course, is the other delicacy. From miso soup and raw fish for breakfast, to an array of items served omakase-style – chef's choice – at dinner, eating is an adventure equal to time on the mountains.
Farther north in Daisetsuzan National Park is Asahidake; with half its top blown out, a gigantic crater remains and sulphurous white clouds smoulder from gaping fumaroles.
At a peak of 2,290 metres, Asahidake is Hokkaido's tallest mountain. From the base, a tram lift climbs 500 metres. There are two runs from the top station and many more options to duck off-piste; there are also a few routes to pick with climbing skins on backcountry skis or a splitboard (a modified snowboard). A couple of dozen vehicles are in the parking lot on a rare February blue-bird day. This is what passes for busy in Daisetsuzan.
Near the tram station base, a new ryokan called La Vista sells a much more luxurious experience than the more utilitarian Ryounkaku. Heavy with iconography of owls – the Ainu creation myth tells of an owl's claws carving the rivers and valleys of Hokkaido – the La Vista onsen is posh and the restaurant gourmet, from the shariko cocott (cod sperm) amuse-bouche to the local melt-in-mouth Tokachi beef barbecued on a hot plate built into the table.
Ever more distant is Kurodake. Rising from the Sounkyo resort, nestled in a gorge marked by basalt columns and waterfalls, a tram rises partway up the mountain as at Asahidake. There are no official runs of any sort, and the three dozen people on hand one day to maul the deep fresh snow in the tight trees are the biggest crowd that Clayton Kernaghan, an Alberta-raised Hokkaido transplant, has ever seen at “Japan's last frontier.”
Then, from late afternoon through the night, a storm pounds down 40 centimetres. In the morning, the prospects of climbing to Kurodake's peak are bleak. An hour later, the sky clears. Beyond our trio, four other people make the trek for the spectacular run from the 1,984-metre mountaintop to the 670-metre base.
“They just get so much snow,” American snowboarder Shaun White, two-time Olympic gold medalist, says in an interview. He has visited Japan often and made his first foray to the Hokkaido backcountry for a film two years ago. “It just dumps. It's a really cool place.”
Back in Furano, born-and-raised local restaurateur Takeshi Morimoto presides at Kumagera, where twisted bare branches, burnt in a long-ago explosion of Tokachidake and salvaged from a local river, sit atop the stone walls. He has made sake for a quarter-century and serves a selection of seven, from one as clear as a crystalline sky through to the last, smouldering dark.
He insists on two things: Drink the sake cold, and it's always best fresh. It's a delicate thing, something properly cherished at its source, a rarity in an era when everything seems ready for export or import. “Be present,” he counsels.
There are temptations to declare spirits real. Three things I know for sure: Spirits imbue Takeshi's sake; the smoky snow and dancing silver birch of Daisetsuzan backcountry's are equal to the best anywhere; and this playground of the gods is one fairy tale that blows away skepticism and leaves nothing but joy, a true believer.
* * *
Pack your bags
Getting there
Air Canada flies daily to Tokyo. In Japan, Sapporo is a short hop on Japan Airlines. Asahikawa is a smaller industrial city, closer to Asahidake and Kurodake. The town of Furano is closest to Tokachidake. The local tourism bureau is very helpful, as most locals do not speak English.
Where to stay
Ryounkaku Tokachidake Onsen On Mount Tokachi; 81 (167) 39-4111 or contact Furano Tourism (www.furano-kankou.com/english/). About $135 a night, two meals included.
La Vista Daisetsuzan At the base of Asahidake. 81 (166) 97-2323; www.japan-ryokan.net/lavistadaisetsuzan. From around $300 a night.
Published: March 5 2010 22:45 | Last updated: March 5 2010 22:45
By Jancis Robinson
The words “Japan, wine exporter” have a somewhat unlikely ring but that is the aim of a new organisation, Koshu of Japan, which is keen to shine an international spotlight on a grape variety that is often dismissed within its native country.
I have just made my second visit in 12 years to Yamanashi prefecture, the Bordeaux of Japan in terms of winemaking. Except it reminds me more of Switzerland than Bordeaux. Every square metre in the heavily populated Kofu basin overlooked by Mount Fuji is cosseted. Individual vineyards are tiny, partly thanks to the postwar policy, implemented by General Douglas MacArthur, who oversaw Japan’s reconstruction, of weakening the powerful landowners by redistribution. Farmers are protected. Labour costs are high. And the most-planted vine variety, like the Chasselas that is known as Fendant in French-speaking Switzerland, is also a table grape.
Perhaps it is this familiarity with the pink-skinned Koshu in the fruit basket that makes many of Japan’s army of wine lovers suspicious of wine made from it. Perhaps it is the fact that Koshu’s thick skins, which help make it resistant to the fungal diseases that can plague other varieties in Japan’s exceptionally humid summers, can all too easily translate in the glass into bitterness. Or perhaps it is simply that Koshu is just too much a part of the national furniture to be taken seriously.
Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are regarded as much more foreign and, therefore, glamorous in Japan. Certainly the likes of Chateau Mercian’s Private Reserve Hokushin Chardonnay 2006 and Suntory’s Tomi Réserve Special 1997 mature red bordeaux blend, top Yamanashi wines from two of the biggest companies, are thoroughly admirable. But it seems unlikely that anyone other than the Japanese would be prepared to pay around £100 a bottle for such wines and, besides, they are made in such small quantities that exporting is hardly viable.
Still, the national government and local authorities are supporting this new initiative to launch an export campaign for varietal Koshu, a drive set in motion only last year by the single-minded Yamanashi wine producer Shigekazu Misawa of Grace Winery.
“It is my dream to see Koshu wine recognised for the qualities I know it can have,” he says.
Equally determined is a former sommelier and Master of Wine student Yuka Kudo, whose job it is to translate the plan into sales. She says: “We decided to focus on a market that was stable economically, had a real interest in Japanese cuisine, and was not a major wine producer itself: Britain.” Some may question the stability of the British economy but they would not deny that the culture of sake-drinking is much less established in Britain than in the US, leaving a convenient gap that might just be filled by Koshu on the wine lists of superior Japanese restaurants in the UK.
Accordingly, a delegation of producers flew to London in January and took over Japanese restaurant Umu to prove to some of us fortunate wine writers that Koshu goes with the likes of shiizakana, grilled sea bream with miso, and then held a much bigger tasting for members of the UK wine trade. They stayed at a modest hotel in Tavistock Square so that they could afford to have 15 translators in attendance when showing off their wines.
Lynne Sherriff, Koshu of Japan’s European co-ordinator, says so far three or four British outfits have expressed an interest in importing this exotic new variety – new to Europe that is, even if there is apparently evidence that this vine was grown in Yamanashi a millennium ago. DNA analysis reveals that its genes are predominantly European, prompting some to speculate that it was brought to Japan along the Silk Road.
. . .
There is a problem, however. Neither the grape Koshu nor the appellation Yamanashi are officially registered with the European Union. The second is likely to take much longer to remedy than the first. Understandably, EU regulations do not permit winemakers to add both sugar to increase final alcohol levels and acid to increase final acid levels in the same wine. Koshu grapes are naturally low in both acid and sugar – though the 2009 vintage was exceptional in both these respects – and export requirements could have a long-term beneficial effect on winemaking techniques.
Because Koshu is so light-bodied and transparent, it is best served relatively cool. It is also advisable to drink it relatively young, so I cannot see how the Japanese will manage to persuade British wine buyers to pay more for it than, for example, they would for a Muscadet from one of the best addresses, which means about £10 a bottle retail. It is not going to be easy for Koshu of Japan. (Pending export agreements and other factors make it impossible to predict exactly when the wines will be available in the UK.)
But even the greatest Koshu sceptics such as Hiroshi Yamamoto, famed for his translations of multiple wine books into Japanese, who dismisses Koshu wines (and half his compatriots) as, “essentially without much personality – like Japanese women”, admit that the quality of the better wines made from Koshu has increased enormously in recent years.
I must confess that what appeals to me about Koshu is its very lack of brashness, its delicacy, purity, limpidity, and the way it goes so well with the calmer regions of the Japanese gastronomic landscape. The better examples pair particularly well with sashimi – and indeed any sort of raw fish dish including oysters, with sushi, tempura, and rice – even some gentler-flavoured risottos. There seems something quintessentially Japanese about a fine Koshu. The word zen keeps coming to mind.
As for specific flavours, I found yuzu (a Japanese citrus) in some, lychee in others, and a professional Japanese wine writer assured me that quince was the fruit she found most often in Koshu. My acquaintance with it is still embryonic but the examples that have particularly impressed me so far have come from producers Grace, Haramo, Lumière, Marufuji and Yamanashi.
The bustle of Toyko's business district masks the stagnation of the Japanese economy. Photograph: Getty
Friday 5 March 2010 08.00 GMT
Despite the veneer of prosperity on the streets of Tokyo, Japan's slow-motion financial crisis looks set to get worse
If you listen to American, European, or even Chinese leaders, Japan is the economic future no one wants.
In selling massive stimulus packages and bank bailouts, western leaders told their people: "We must do this or we will end up like Japan, mired in recession and deflation for a decade or more."
Chinese leaders love pointing to Japan as the prime reason not to allow any significant appreciation of their conspicuously undervalued currency.
"Western leaders forced Japan to let its currency rise in the second half of the 1980s and look at the disaster that followed."
Yes, nobody wants to be Japan, the fallen angel that went from one of the fastest-growing economies in the world for more than three decades to one that has slowed to a crawl for the last 18 years. No one wants to live with the trauma of the deflation (falling prices) that Japan has repeatedly experienced. No one wants to navigate the precarious government-debt dynamic that Japan faces, with debt levels far above 100% of GDP (even if one factors in the Japanese government's vast holdings of foreign-exchange reserves). No one wants to go from being a world-beater to a poster child for economic stagnation.
And yet visitors to Tokyo today see prosperity everywhere. The shops and office buildings are bustling with activity. Restaurants are packed with people, dressed in better clothing that one typically sees in New York or Paris. After all, even after nearly two decades of "recession", per-capita income in Japan is more than £27,000 (at market exchange rates). Japan is still the third-largest economy in the world after the United States and China. Its unemployment rate remained low during most of its "lost decade", and, although it has shot up more recently, it is still only 5%.
So what gives? First, things look a lot grimmer when one gets two hours outside of Tokyo to places such as Hokkaido. These poorer outlying regions are hugely dependent on public-works projects for employment. As the government's fiscal position has steadily weakened, the jobs have become far scarcer. True, there are beautifully paved roads all around, but they go nowhere. Old people have retreated to villages, many growing their own food, their children having long abandoned them for the cities.
Even in Tokyo, the air of normalcy is misleading. Two decades ago, Japanese workers could expect to receive massive year-end bonuses, typically amounting to one-third of their salary or more. Now these have gradually shrunk to nothing. True, thanks to falling prices, the purchasing power of workers' remaining income has held up, but it is still down by more than 10%. There is far more job insecurity than ever before as firms increasingly offer temporary jobs in place of once-treasured "lifetime employment".
Although hardly in crisis (yet), Japan's fiscal situation grows more alarming by the day. Until now, the government has been able to finance its vast debts locally, despite paying paltry interest rates even on longer-term borrowings. Remarkably, Japanese savers soak up some 95% of their government's debt. Perhaps burned by the way stock prices and real estate collapsed when the 1980s bubble burst, savers would rather go for what they view as safe bonds, especially as gently falling prices make the returns go farther than would be the case in a more normal inflation environment.
Unfortunately, as well as Japan has held up until now, it still faces profound challenges. First and foremost, there is its ever-falling labour supply, owing to extraordinarily low birth rates and deep-seated resistance to foreign immigration. The country also needs to find ways to enhance the productivity of those workers it does have.
Inefficiency in agriculture, retail and government are legendary. Even at Japan's world-beating export firms, reluctance to confront the ingrained interests of the old-boy network has made it difficult to prune less profitable product lines – and the workers who make them.
As the population ages and shrinks, more people will retire and start selling those government bonds that they are now lapping up. At some point, Japan will face its own Greek tragedy as the market charges sharply higher interest rates.
The government will be forced to consider raising revenues sharply. The best guess is that Japan will raise its VAT, now only 5%, far below European levels. But is it plausible to raise taxes in the face of such sustained low growth?
Investors who have bet against Japan in the past have been badly burned, grossly underestimating the Japanese people's remarkable flexibility and resilience. But the fiscal road ahead looks increasingly perilous, with political consensus fraying badly in recent years.
In the end, are foreign leaders right to scare their people with tales of Japan? Certainly, the hyperbole is overblown; the Chinese, especially, should be so lucky. But neither should apologists for deficits point to Japan as reason to be calm about outsized stimulus packages. Japan's ability to trudge on in the face of huge adversity is admirable, but the risks of crisis ahead are surely greater than bond markets seem to recognise.
Cover the first issue of «Pioneer truth»
March 6, 1925, was the day Pionerskaya Pravda (The Pioneer Truth) was first issued. Its title replicated the name of the main Soviet print medium, Pravda, as did numerous other newspapers. Pionerskaya Pravda was designed in the image and liking of the Komsomolskaya Pravda, the mouthpiece of the Komsomol organization, and was used for similar purposes. Both the Pioneer and the Komsomol organizations were junior bodies of the Communist Party, hence their main goal was to ensure that the younger generation would become good devoted communists when their time came.
Pionerskaya Pravda has always been popular with teenagers, each of them finding something to their taste. For that reason, in the 1970s and 1980s the paper’s circulation rose to 10 million issues. Since Pionerskaya Pravda still remained a propaganda medium whose motto read “helping the Pioneer organization and the school to raise political awareness and communist spirit in the younger generation,” many schools were required to subscribe to the paper and expected to discuss every issue at special debates and club meetings. Kids did not normally respond to the propaganda part, but genuinely felt for their starving peers from Africa and enjoyed taking part in the Pionerskaya Pravda-supervised charity drives out of sheer humanity, not political bias. Pionerka, as it was lovingly called, initiated international correspondence with teenagers from other socialist countries, and Soviet pioneers enjoyed their international friendships. Pionerka received about 200 thousand letters from young children all around the Union each year.
Young pioneers were welcome to try their hand at journalism, side by side with experienced professional journalists. The paper also provided informational and promotional support for all-Union and international youth activities: contests, sport matches, arts and crafts exhibitions and was hailed by many prominent Soviet writers who published their addresses (open letters) on its pages.
In the 1980s, with the advent of perestroika, the format of the newspaper was changed to fit the new youth lifestyle. In the era marked by a total absence of information, Pionerka became a real getaway for teenagers. Now, the pages of the paper gleamed with celebrity stories and lyrics for pop songs, which, in the absence of the Internet, made the paper precious for fans. The last page of every issue contained a chapter from a new teenage novel. It was published in installments, becoming a kind of written TV series. It was a very smart move which made kids look forward to the next issue. Sometimes, as part of a contest, authors would ask the readers to finish the story for them, and winners were awarded.
The Pioneer organization ceased to exist, but Pionerka still maintains a certain niche, though having lost its past popularity.
Friday, 5 March, 2010
Source: Xinhua
CHINA targets a rise of consumer price of around 3 percent this year, Premier Wen Jiabao said when delivering a government work at the parliament's annual session today.
The target takes into account of the carry-over effects of last year's price changes, price fluctuations of major international commodities, hefty increase of domestic money and credit supply, and consumers' ability to bear price increases, Wen said in the report delivered to the Third Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC).
The figure compares with a 0.7 percent fall of CPI last year as economic slowdown and lackluster demand drove prices down.
The report noted the goal leaves room for reform in resource and environment taxes and fees and in the pricing of resource products.
Wen said the government will deepen the reform of pricing of resource products as the current state-controlled pricing mechanism does no good for conserving energy and resources, and achieving sustainable development.
Zhuang Jian, a senior economist with the Asian Development Bank, said the target was lower than expected as analysts did not expect the resource price reform would come as early as this year.
"The 3 percent target is mild, which eases inflation fears. The resource price reform is very likely to stage this year," he said. Zhuang noted although the full year target is 3 percent, there will be monthly fluctuations.
As the economy picked up thanks to the government's stimulus package, CPI returned to the positive territory last December, and gained 1.5 percent in January.
Published: March 4, 2010
BEIJING — Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China said Friday that the nation would expand social spending, bolster lending, curb inflation and meet its traditional 8 percent economic growth target in 2010, but he cautioned that China still confronted “a very complex situation” in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Delivering his annual report to China’s unelected legislature, the National People’s Congress, Mr. Wen said that “destabilizing factors and uncertainties” in the world economy posed a challenge to China’s continued growth. But he effectively said that China’s plan to slowly ease away from last year’s enormous economic stimulus program, which spared China the worst of the recession, would continue unchanged.
“There’s no surprise here,” Tao Wang, an economist for USB Securities in Beijing, said in an interview after Mr. Wen’s address. “This has been the working assumption for a long time.”
Mr. Wen’s 35-page speech, the rough equivalent of an American State of the Union address, included a listing of statistics aimed at underscoring the government’s successful policies, swathed in boilerplate assertions of arduous struggle and glorious achievement.
While economies in most of the rest of the world struggled last year, China managed an 8.7 percent increase in its gross domestic product, capped by 10.7 percent growth in the last quarter of 2009. Many economists, including Ms. Wang, predict that China will easily beat its goal of 8 percent growth this year.
But Mr. Wen’s address also referred to problems in China’s booming economy that some experts say could hamstring future growth if they are not addressed quickly.
He pledged to clamp down on speculative real-estate purchases, which some analysts say are creating a bubble in China’s housing market. He also said the state would take measures to rein in an explosive rise in urban land prices. He warned that some Chinese industries, fed a diet of easy money and loose regulation, had developed serious overcapacity problems.
And even as he committed to expand the nation’s money supply by 17 percent this year, increasing lending by 7.5 trillion renminbi, or $1.1 trillion, Mr. Wen warned that “latent risks in the banking and public finance sectors are increasing.”
More skeptical economists have contended that China’s flood of lending during the recession will create a mountain of bad debt that will hamper future growth.
Mr. Wen said the government would run a budget deficit of $154 billion in 2010, which is in line with economists’ expectations. As a share of gross domestic product, the projected deficit is unchanged from last year.
Over all, spending will rise about 11.4 percent this year, half of the increase in spending during the recession last year.
Beyond economics, Mr. Wen’s speech laid out a familiar blueprint for raising China from a developing nation into the top ranks of the developed world. Last year, he said, the government’s stimulus measures helped increase auto sales by 46.2 percent, housing by 42.1 percent, as measured in square meters, and retail sales of consumer goods by 16 percent.
He recited a series of often-staggering numbers to highlight the country’s rapid development: 800,000 older homes were renovated in 2009; 165,000 miles of power lines were upgraded; 3,450 miles of new rail lines were laid; 2,900 miles of new freeway were opened; 35 airports were either built or renovated.
Mr. Wen said that the government had drastically increased spending on low-income housing, pensions, education and health care, and that the increases would continue this year. The government will take new steps to recruit top-level educators to China, to improve teacher training and to direct talented teachers to impoverished rural areas, he said.
Mr. Wen also said that China would pour money into strategic industries, increasing research and development and infrastructure spending to “capture the economic, scientific and technological high ground.” Among the areas he singled out were biomedicine, energy conservation, information technology and high-end manufacturing.
In a bow to China’s status as the world’s single-largest polluter, Mr. Wen also pledged to increase environmental protection measures, planting nearly 23,000 square miles of new forests, expanding sewage treatment and clean drinking-water programs, and retrofitting coal-burning power plants with advanced machinery to cut emissions.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 5, 2010, on page A7 of the New York edition.
Mar 5 06:00 AM US/Eastern
(AP) - TOKYO, March 5 (Kyodo)
Princess Aiko, the only child of Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako, has been reluctant to attend school since Monday after being "treated harshly" by boys in her grade, an official of the Imperial Household Agency said Friday.
The 8-year-old princess has been complaining of strong anxiety and stomachache, said Issei Nomura, the top aide to the crown prince and princess.
Princess Aiko, a granddaughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, is a second grader at Gakushuin Primary School in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward.
Nomura, grand master of the crown prince's household, told a regular news conference that the princess attended school Tuesday but left school early. She has since been absent from school.
The school has found that a group of boys had dealt rowdily with several of their school mates, including Princess Aiko, Nomura said, adding that the palace has asked the school to address the matter.
He also said the palace has obtained consent from the school to publicize the princess's situation.
At a separate press conference, Motomasa Higashisono, a senior director of the Gakushuin School Corporation that runs a range of schools from kindergarten to university, said the princess "got scared Tuesday when she went by a boy who dashed out of a classroom."
"It must have reminded her of the rowdy behavior of several boys in the past, who may have thrown things, and made her uneasy," Higashisono said.
The princess entered Gakushuin Primary School in April 2008 after finishing Gakushuin Kindergarten in March that year.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said, "As an individual citizen, I hope she recovers and gets well as quickly as possible."
View AP Article on BreitbartFriday, March 5, 2010
Woman starved son, 5, to death
because he looked like husband?
NARA (Kyodo) A 26-year-old Nara Prefecture woman who was arrested together with her husband Wednesday for allegedly starving their 5-year-old son to death has told investigators she could not feel any affection for him because of his resemblance to his father, police sources said Thursday.
Mami Yoshida, a part-time worker, also told investigators her relationship with her husband, Hiroshi, 35, a corporate employee, had soured. The investigators reckon the couple's worsening relations led to the abuse of their son, Tomoki.
Yoshida said she felt affection for the couple's other child, a daughter, 3, who shows no signs of having been abused.
Her husband was quoted as saying he was aware their son had been getting weak, but did nothing to protect him.
They are suspected of having failed to give sufficient food or provide necessary medical care for their son since early January.
On Wednesday, the boy was found unconscious by a municipal official who visited the family home after Yoshida called a child counseling center. The boy was lying on a futon wearing a diaper and looking emaciated, the city said.
The official called an ambulance to take the boy to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Although the average height of a 5-year-old is 110 cm, their son was only 85 cm tall and weighed just 6.2 kg, a third of the average weight.
On Thursday, the police conducted an autopsy and also raided the couple's home in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, in search of evidence.
According to the police, while the couple took their daughter to a day care center while they worked, they left their son alone at home and did not take him to a kindergarten or a day care center.
The Sakurai Municipal Government said the boy underwent a regular health check for 10-month-old babies in 2005. But the parents failed to ensure their son had regular checkups in 2006, when he became 18 months old, and in 2008, when he turned 3 1/2 years old.
In response to the municipal inquiries on those occasions, Mami told officials she needed rest as she was pregnant and could not take her son to the health checkups because she was busy caring for a relative.
Fatal abuse arrest
SAITAMA (Kyodo) Police arrested a couple Thursday in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, on suspicion of failing to provide sufficient food for their son, who became weak and died in February 2008.
The 4-year-old son of Masami Shindo, 47, and his wife, Sanae, 37, weighed only 10 kg and was 94 cm tall at the time of his death, the police said.
The couple are suspected of failing to bathe and feed the boy, making it difficult for him to walk. They did not take him to see a doctor despite his poor health, the investigation found.
An autopsy showed that the boy, who was hospitalized on Feb. 11, 2008, following an emergency call, suffered from malnutrition and died of acute encephalopathy.
The boy and his brother, 10, lived with their parents at the time. The older son now lives in a child nursing facility.
9 Aug, 1942 in the Grand Hall of Leningrad Philharmonic, the first performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony
On 5 March 1942, Dmitry Shostakovich’s world-renowned Seventh Symphony premiered in Kuibyshev (present day Samara, Russia) during the 900-day siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Performed by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra and conducted by Samuil Samosud, it was broadcast on the radio across the Soviet Union.
Shostakovich began composing the Seventh Symphony in 1941 when Leningrad was besieged by the Germans, but the work was premiered in Kuybyshev, a remote city to which a lot of musicians had been evacuated. Shostakovich dedicated the symphony to the city of Leningrad and the fight against fascism, although he later admitted that he thought of the symphony even prior to the beginning of the war.
“I thought of other enemies of mankind while composing this theme,” he wrote. “I deplore fascism, and not only German fascism, but all kinds. I feel immeasurable grief for all who were killed by Hitler. But I also feel grief for those who died by the order of Stalin…”
Performances followed throughout the year in Moscow, London and New York, and a premier in Leningrad itself, conducted by Karl Eliasberg, took place on 9 August 1942. The performance was heard through loudspeakers throughout the city and beyond, reaching the German forces stationed outside the city. The siege was to last another eighteen months but the performance was a psychological boost and a massive show of defiance.
FROMMER’S:
The 203-Meter Mountain (Erlingsan Gaodi) was Russia's rear defense base during the Russo-Japanese War and the site of one of the war's most pivotal battles. Between 10,000 and 17,000 Japanese soldiers, including the Japanese commander's son, died taking the mountain. A few of the trenches where they fought have been preserved, served by trails near the summit. An exhibition room halfway up the hill contains several Qing-era photos of the port and a few rusted swords and bullets used in the battle. Most striking is a large, bullet-shaped monument on the summit, erected by the Japanese and defaced by Russian tourists. You can look down into the port itself from here. The site is open 24 hours; admission is ¥30 ($3.90/£1.95); for information, call tel. 0411/8639-8277.
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