Strange story of 120 Chinese children who disappeared in Sweden

A recently released WikiLeaks cable from 2006 reveals 120 Chinese children vanished from  Swedish immigration centers within a period of 18 months. 

The Embassy of Stockholm believes the disappearing acts were managed by organized traffickers residing in several European countries.

The children -- ages 10 to 18 -- arrived in Sweden unaccompanied and, oftentimes, without travel documents, to seek political asylum. They all claimed they had relatives who were victims of religious persecution and seemed "very professionally coached" during questioning, according to a Swedish official. 

Shortly after their arrival, police believe the children escaped to locations in Denmark, Germany, Italy, France or the Netherlands. The children are not placed in secured areas since "they are minors and have committed no crime," the report said.

The Embassy describes the trafficking situation:

While we admit we have only a superficial grasp of this situation, we are nonetheless incredulous about the narrow interpretation of laws and implementation of strict rights of privacy that paradoxically result in a basic loss of human rights of these minors.  We report this to our neighboring posts in the hope they may have some complimentary information.  While the European nations mentioned all are strong advocates of trafficking in persons conventions, it seems something critical is lacking on the ground when this trafficking actually takes place.

During a single police surveillance, it was discovered that a group of children who left a Stockholm reception center traveled to Germany after receiving instructions on their cell phones. Authorities were not permitted to continue their surveillance into the country and the children have not been seen since.

In Nov. 2005, two Chinese nationals legally residing in Sweden were arrested in connection with the children trafficking. In their apartment, authorities found numerous forged Japanese passports and several thousand dollars.

Source: Inside Business.

R. Crumb withdraws from arts festival after being labelled a 'sex pervert'

Anti child abuse activists have forced reclusive American artist R. Crumb to pull out of a graphic arts festival in Sydney, Australia, which is due to take place later this month.

Iain Shedden of The Australian newspaper reports that Crumb was to be the “main attraction” at the festival, however, after a separate Sydney newspaper called the artist a “self-confessed sex pervert” and a “very warped human being,” the artist made the decision to withdraw.

On July 31, the Sydney-based Sunday Telegraph newspaper featured the headline, “Cult Genius or Filthy Weirdo” and anti-child abuse campaigner Hetty Johnston referred to Crumb’s work as “crude and perverted images emanating from what is clearly a sick mind.”

Crumb is known for his sexually explicit illustrations, some which include scenes of bestiality and rape.

“It was strong stuff and it made me look very, very bad,” Crumb said.

“All it takes is a few people who overreact to something like that to show up and cause unpleasantness. I have a lot of anxiety about having to confront some angry sexual assault crisis group. I do these crazy cartoons. I have no defense. I just have to throw up my hands.”

Festival co-curator Jordan Verzar has since asked Crumb to reconsider his decision.

Obama admin announces first-ever fuel standards for trucks; industry reacts

In a move lauded by many members of the trucking industry, the White House announced new fuel efficiency standards for medium and heavy trucks Monday — the first time fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas pollution standards have been set for heavy duty vehicles.

The new standards, crafted jointly by the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency, require semi-trucks from model years 2014-2018 to achieve an approximate 20 percent reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, saving up to 4 gallons of fuel for every 100 miles traveled.

Heavy-duty pickups and vehicles like buses, delivery trucks, or vans would save 1 gallon per 100 miles, and in total, the administration expects the new regulations will save 530 million barrels of oil over the lifetime of vehicles sold between 2014 and 2018.

They standards are part of a larger set of fuel efficiency standards crafted by the administration. In July, the administration announced an aggressive increase to Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, requiring automakers to reach an average 55.4 mpg for passenger cars by 2025. The current CAFE standard for 2011 is 30.2 mpg.

Read more here.

Tiny Pacific isle of Niue gets Stars Wars currency

The Pacific island nation of Niue is about to issue $2 coins as legal tender with images of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Darth Vader.

 

It will be the first time characters from the legendary film series Star Wars - which has influenced literature, music, toys and popular culture for decades - will have appeared on legal tender.

But the 2000 residents of Niue, which uses New Zealand currency, will be the only people allowed to use the $NZ2 coin as legitimate money.

With an actual value of more than $100, and made of silver worth $40 alone, the coins are unlikely to be seen down at the local shops.

"You wouldn't want to go and spend them because they're only worth $2 but the value is much more than that," New Zealand Mint Vice President of USA Operations Chris Kirkness told Fairfax New Zealand.
"No one is going to go buy an ice cream with them."

The coin set, which includes eight one-ounce silver coins and 10 silver-plated metal coins, has colour images of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader and other Star Wars characters.

The Niuean government effigy will be embossed on the coins and the heavily aid-dependent nation will get an undisclosed royalty payment from New Zealand Mint for its involvement in the project.

The set will retail for about $450 and is expected to be hugely popular with both coin collectors and Star Wars devotees worldwide.

Only 7500 copies of each coin will be made, with the first sets to be made available in November.
Themed sets will include a Darth Vader coin box fitted with the character's signature deep-breathing sound and a Millennium Falcon box that makes the noise of jet taking off when opened.

Chinese Government begins giving direct orders to the USA

The Chinese Government has begun giving orders to the United States of America, directing the US government on how to frame is budgets and social policies in the aftermath of the recent Standard & Poors downgrade of America's credit rating from AAA+ to AA+.

"China," said an editorial by Xinhua, the Communist dictatorship's official newsagency, "has every right now to demand the US to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets."

It further prescribes what the US should do with its money.

The editorial, which China scholars said could only have been published with the consent of the national leadership, Xinhua said the US must cut its "gigantic military expenditure and bloated social welfare costs".

Pressing its advantage in America's moment of vulnerability, China said: "International supervision over the issue of US dollars should be introduced and a new, stable and secured global reserve currency may also be an option to avert a catastrophe caused by any single country."

"What we are seeing here," says Hugh White, a strategic studies expert at the Australian National University, "is a much more strident tone than anything we have seen before".

So far, all of this commentary is published in English. But there is another level of Chinese reaction that has been invisible to English speakers.

"There's a real difference between the Chinese domestic propaganda and the foreign propaganda on this," observes a sinologist from the University of Canterbury, Anne-Marie Brady.

"The tone it's adopting towards the US in English is, 'We're telling off America.' In Chinese, it is much more crowing and gloating."

The heading on the lead article in Xinhua's Mandarin version translates as, "The world will never trust America again," Brady says, "which is fairly heavy stuff.''

In the famous strategic guidance he gave his comrades in the Communist Party, the father of China's modernisation, Deng Xiaoping, said: "Hide your strength, bide your time, and do what you can."

Brady says: "In the last 10 years, particularly since the financial crisis hit in 2008, there's been a shift towards the last part, 'do what you can'," in the behaviour of the Chinese leadership.

"That's code for standing up for China's interests. But this is looking to be beyond that. It's quite harsh."
It's also pretty brave of China to make the boast that US government debt, which, on its new, lower assessment from Standard & Poor's, is rated AA+, is untrustworthy. Because the same agency rates Chinese government debt as A+, which is three rankings lower.

And this leads to the third feature of China's criticism: its potential effect.

"It's probably pretty hard for the Chinese to resist the temptation to gloat," White says, "but from the US point of view, this would confirm US anxieties about China."

"China wants to end up on top," White suggests, "but the secret is to exercise great patience. This tells the US that China is out to get them. Nothing would galvanise the US to get its act together better than the sense that China is out to eat their lunch. Strategically, gloating is unwise."

'Concerns over the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced' - scientists

Scientists say current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced.

Danish researchers analysed ancient pieces of driftwood in north Greenland which they say is an accurate way to measure the extent of ancient ice loss.

Writing in the journal Science, the team found evidence that ice levels were about 50 percent lower 5,000 years ago.

They say changes to wind systems can slow down the rate of melting.

They argue, therefore, that a tipping point under current scenarios is unlikely.

While modern observations by ship and by satellite give us a very accurate picture of the recent state of the ice, historic information is limited. The ice comes and goes without leaving a permanent record.

But a Danish team believes it has found an indirect method that gives a clear picture of the ice loss dating back 11,000 years.

Dr Svend Funder from the Natural History Museum of Denmark led several expeditions to inhospitable regions of Northern Greenland. On these frozen shores the Danish team noticed several pieces of ancient driftwood.

They concluded that it could be an important method of unlocking the secrets of the ancient ice.

"Driftwood cannot float across the water, it has to be ferried across the ocean on ice, and this voyage takes several years, which means that driftwood is actually a signal of multi-year sea ice in the ocean and it is this ice that is at risk at the moment," said Dr Funder.

Carbon dating was used to determine the age of the wood. And figuring out its origins also yielded important information.

"It's so lovely that drift wood from Siberia is mainly larch and from North America is mainly spruce. So if we see there was more larch or spruce we can see that the wind system had changed and in some periods there was little spruce and in other periods there was lots," he said.

Wind delay?

As well as the driftwood, the scientists mapped beach ridges for 500km (310 miles) along the coast. This proved that at one time the waves had reached the shore unhindered by the ice.

Dr Funder and his team say their data shows a clear connection between temperature and the amount of sea ice. The researchers concluded that for about 3,000 years, during a period called the Holocene Climate Optimum, there was more open water and far less ice than today - probably less than 50 percent of the minimum Arctic sea ice recorded in 2007.

But the researcher says that even with a loss of this size, the sea ice will not reach a point of no return.

"I think we can say that with the loss of 50 percent of the current ice, the tipping point wasn't reached."

The idea of an Arctic tipping point has been highlighted by many scientists in recent years. They have argued that when enough ice is lost it could cause a runaway effect with disastrous consequences.

"I don't say that our current worries are not justified, but I think that there are factors which will work to delay the action in relation to some of the models that have been in the media.

"I think the effect of temperature and global warming may cause a change in the general wind systems which maybe will delay the effects of the rapidly rising temperatures a little bit."

The researchers are now set to examine DNA from the fossils of polar bears to try and find out how the animals fared when the temperatures were higher and there was much less ice.

Source: BBC

Police Academy's Hightower found dead at home

Charles "Bubba" Smith, an NFL lineman who won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Colts and had a second career acting in several Police Academy films, has died. He was 66.

Smith's body was found on Wednesday at his home in the Baldwin Hills suburb of Los Angeles, said Los Angeles police spokesman Officer Gregory Baek.

He is believed to have died of natural causes, but the coroner's office has not made a final determination, LAPD said.

Video.

Poor US jobs data could tip markets further down

Markets rise and markets fall, but the declines overnight — 512.8 points or 4.3 per cent on the 30-share Dow Jones marker, 4.8 per cent on America's 500 share S&P 500 counter, 3.4 per cent in the United Kingdom, more than 5 per cent in Italy, 4 per cent in Spain, 3.4 per cent in Spain — are rarely seen.

The Dow's descent was for the biggest one day loss since December 1, 2008.

Asian markets have plunged, too.  CNBC reports "Indiscriminate selling" in Chinese markets, and the Japanese Nikkei was holding steady but down 350 pts at the time of writing.

The South Korean government was reported to be holding  an "emergency meeting" in response to a stocks plunge there.

Even resource rich Australia, which has more or les defied the global financial crisis until now, saw heavy selling on its stock exchanges overnight our time.

As usual, the immediate triggers were varied and somewhat unexpected.

Coming as fears grew that Spain and Italy would be dragged into Europe's sovereign debt crisis,  it was enough to contaminate sentiment on Wall Street, where traders had already realised that government spending cuts tied to the increase in America's maxed-out borrowing limit would undermine growth, and perhaps tip the United States back into recession.

The crucial near-term hurdle for the markets comes tonight, when US jobs data is released.

The weight of debt bears down on economic growth by diverting resources to debt-service.

 

In a low growth environment the options for getting debt loads down narrow to cuts in government spending and income tax increases, basically.

 

Both add even more weight to the economy in the short and medium term.

 

Court rules organic farmers can sue conventional, GMO farmers for pesticide 'trespass' and contamination

Purveyors of conventional and genetically-modified (GM) crops -- and the pesticides and herbicides that accompany them -- are finally getting a taste of their own legal medicine.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals recently ruled that a large organic farm surrounded by chemical-laden conventional farms can seek damages for lost crops, as well as lost profits, caused by the illegal trespassing of pesticides and herbicides on its property.

Oluf and Debra Johnson's 1,500-acre organic farm in Stearns County, Minn., has repeatedly been contaminated by nearby conventional and GMO farms since the couple started it in the 1990s. A local pesticide cooperative known as Paynesville Farmers Union (PFU), which is near the farm, has been cited at least four times for violating pesticide laws, and inadvertently causing damage to the Johnson's farm.

The first time it was realized that pesticides had drifted onto the Johnson's farm in 1998, PFU apologized, but did not agree to pay for damages. As anyone with an understanding of organic practices knows, even a small bit of contamination can result in having to plow under that season's crops, forget profits, and even lose the ability to grow organic crops in the same field for at least a couple years.

The Johnson's let the first incident slide. But after the second, third, and fourth times, they decided that enough was enough. Following the second pesticide drift in 2002, the Johnson's filed a complaint with the Minnesota Agriculture Department, which eventually ruled that PFU had illegally sprayed chemicals on windy days, which led to contamination of the Johnson's organic crops.

PFU settled with the Johnson's out of court, and the Johnson's agreed to sell their tainted products as non-organics for a lower price, and pull the fields from production for three years in order to bring them back up to organic standards. But PFU's inconsiderate spraying habits continued, with numerous additional incidents occurring in 2005, 2007, and 2008, according to the Star Tribune.

After enduring much hardship, the Johnson's finally ended up suing PFU in 2009 for negligence and trespass, only to receive denial from the district court that received the case. But after appealing, the Johnson's received favor from the Appeals Court, which ruled that particulate matter, including pesticides, herbicides, and even GM particulates, that contaminates nearby fields is, in fact, considered illegal trespass, and is subject to the same laws concerning other forms of trespass.

Thieves hit businessman where it hurts most - by taking his lapdogs

Australian businessman Ian Lazar is used to dealing with threats. The lender of last resort has been bashed, sued, abused and now employs bodyguards to look out for him.

But now his enemies have hit Mr Lazar where it hurts most. Ten days ago four of his seven beloved pooches were kidnapped.

''They knew that my dogs are my kids. They get dressed every morning, have pyjamas and I fought for them in my divorce as one does with kids,'' Mr Lazar said yesterday.

The four lapdogs - Goldberg, a miniature poodle, Max, a Maltese terrier, and Bella and Lilly, Maltese shih-tzus - were taken from Mr Lazar's north shore home on July 21, between 4pm and 10pm.

He had since been approached ''through third parties to buy them back or their throats will be cut, one by one'', he said. Mr Lazar said that although he would ''rather die myself than see any pain or torment to my beautiful dogs,'' he was refusing to give into the demands, saying: ''They are never going to get a cent out of me.''

The dog snatchers are demanding $300,000 for the safe return of the four fluffy canines.
Last Saturday, when Mr Lazar demanded ''proof of life,'' he was sent a photo of his dogs cowering in a cage, with the front page of The Australian Financial Review showing Saturday's date.

''They've been watching too many movies,'' Mr Lazar said.

Man pleads guilty to smuggling turtles

A Japanese man has pleaded guilty to smuggling 55 live turtles and tortoises into the United States by hiding them in snack-food boxes.

Atsushi Yamagami, 39, pleaded guilty in a Los Angeles court on Monday to one felony count of smuggling, US federal prosecutors said.

Yamagami faces a maximum of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on October 31.

Another man in the operation, Norihide Ushirozako, pleaded guilty on May 23 and is scheduled for sentencing on Tuesday.

The men, both from Osaka, were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in January as part of an undercover investigation by US federal agents called Operation Flying Turtle.

The animals are protected by an international endangered species agreement and can only be imported with a permit.

AP.