Germans detained in Iran meet families

28 December 2010 - 04H06

A jumping-jack puppet featuring a likeness of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on display at a stall in a market in Berlin December 12, 2010. Two German journalists held in Iran since October have been able to meet their families in the northwest city of Tabriz, where they are in jail, Germany's foreign ministry confirmed Tuesday.

German Foreign Minister and vice-chancellor Guido Westerwelle, seen here on December 22, thanked his Iranian counterpart for his "support" after it was confirmed that German journalists held in Iran since October have been able to meet their families in the northwest city of Tabriz.

A picture released by Iran's state-run Press TV shows Iranian 43-year-old Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani standing in her home, where her husband was killed, in the city of Osku, northwestern Iran, on December 5. Iran has freed the woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, her son, and her lawyer.

AFP - Two German journalists detained in Iran since October have met their families, officials said, as Germany's foreign minister on Tuesday thanked his Iranian counterpart for his help.

The relatives were allowed to meet the two men in the northwest city of Tabriz, a city about 530 kilometres (330 miles) northwest of the capital Tehran, where they are in jail, Germany's foreign ministry confirmed Tuesday.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle thanked his Iranian counterpart for his "support", in a statement published on the foreign ministry website.

But Germany wanted to see them freed and allowed to return home, he repeated.

Moussa Kahlilolahi, the general prosecutor in the city of Tabriz had announced the meeting on Monday in a statement covered by the official IRNA news agency.

"Two members of the families of two German nationals arrived Monday night in Tabriz and they will be able to meet with them," said Kahlilolahi.

IRNA reported that the foreign ministry "has made it possible for two German nationals arrested in Iran to meet their families" after Westerwelle had appealed to his Iranian counterpart.

German weekly Bild am Sonntag has said its two employees, who have not been named, travelled to Iran to investigate the case of Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.

They were arrested on October 10 in Tabriz together with the son and family lawyer of Ashtiani, whose case has sparked international outrage and diplomatic intervention by several Western governments as well as the Vatican.

Iran says the two entered the country on tourist visas and failed to obtain the necessary accreditation for journalists from the authorities before "posing as reporters" when they contacted her family.

The minister's request for a meeting with their families had been granted "on humanitarian grounds" and took into account the Christian holiday season, IRNA reported.

"The German foreign ministry and the German embassy had been informed," the official news agency added.

Earlier Monday, Germany summoned the Iranian ambassador over Tehran's refusal to allow the jailed journalists see their families over the Christmas holidays, a German foreign ministry spokesman said.

The reporters' families had travelled to Iran to visit them in jail but that the trip had been in vain despite "several firm promises" from the Iranian side, said spokesman Stefan Bredohl.

"As such a visit has yet to take place, the Iranian ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry and State Secretary (Wolf-Ruthart) Born very clearly expressed the German government's displeasure," Bredohl added.

Iran's prosecutor general Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie said on December 5 that the two Germans were placed under investigation for illegal entry to the country, but denied they faced espionage charges.

"These two did some violations after entering the country, which is under investigation. Nobody labelled them as spies," he was quoted as saying at the time.

All journalists working for foreign media in Iran must obtain accreditation from the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance in order to work in the Islamic republic.

China gets tough with S.Koreans spying on North

28 December 2010 - 04H22

Chinese visitors look out over North Korea (behind) at the Chinese border town of Tu Men in China's northeast Jilin province.

AFP - China is getting tougher with South Korean spies caught collecting intelligence there on North Korea, jailing one of them for more than a year despite pleas from Seoul, news reports said Tuesday.

The army major had been trying to collect information on the North's nuclear and missile programmes when he was caught in July last year in a sting operation, Yonhap news agency and the Korea JoongAng Daily said.

A defence ministry spokesman declined to comment.

The newspaper said the man it identified as Major Cho was arrested in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang following a rendezvous with a Chinese military officer posing as an informant.

Cho gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Chinese officer for information about the North's nuclear development and missiles, it said. He was jailed for 14 months despite the South's request that he be repatriated.

A captured agent is usually released and repatriated after his home country promises in writing to prevent a recurrence, the Korea Joongang Daily said.

Cho's imprisonment also caused unrest among South Korean intelligence agents because he was repatriated along with South Korean criminals who had been arrested for robbery or fraud, it said.

The paper quoted intelligence officials as saying Cho may have been treated in a tougher fashion than normal because he was arrested at a sensitive time, just after the North's second nuclear test in May 2009.

China is the North's sole major ally and economic lifeline.

Festive fireworks light up sleepy Philippine town

28 December 2010 - 05H07

A worker makes a "fountain", which spews sparks into the air when lit, at a factory in Baliuag in Bulacan province, north of Manila. Factories such as these employ some 100,000 people in Baliuag and nearby areas of Bulacan province, churning out fireworks of different sizes and calibre.

An employee of Nation Fireworks rolls a popular firework known locally as the "sawa" or python, in Baliuag in Bulacan province, north of Manila. Revellers wrap them around lamp posts or trees to be set off minutes before the clock strikes midnight to welcome the New Year.

A worker prepares dried "fountains", which spew sparks into the air when lit, for packing at a factory in Baliuag in Bulacan province. Though the work is dirty and potentially life-threatening, the average pay of 3,000 pesos (68 dollars) a week is good money in a country where the daily factory wage is typically less than six dollars.

An employee of Nation Fireworks displays fireworks for sale in Baliuag in Bulacan province, north of Manila. Of the street-legal varieties, the "Judas Belt", presumably named after Jesus Christ's disciple-turned-traitor Judas Iscariot, is a string of triangular crackers that pop like a rifle clip emptying in rapid fire.

AFP - Gunpowder coats Angelito Garce as the Philippine pyrotechnics wizard works his magic on a vat of industrial chemicals, turning them into exploding cows, pythons and fountains.

Come nightfall on Friday, his grimy and dangerous toil is expected to help light up the Asian archipelago's skies as millions of New Year revellers set off fireworks for a loud and fiery send off to 2010.

The 16 million-dollar industry is based in the sleepy town of Baliuag and adjoining towns near Manila, where tiny sheds rise amid a sea of green rice paddies to give farmers some work between harvests.

"Our jobs depend on people using fireworks to celebrate," Garce, 44, told AFP as he and 30 relatives and friends worked overtime to meet what could be a last-minute surge in demand.

Garce is considered among the master artisans who specialise in mixing gunpowder with other chemicals, a tradecraft passed from one generation to another in an unbroken string lasting more than a hundred years.

Drums filled with water line the shed's walls in case a fire breaks out -- a firetruck would not fit on the narrow tracks and would likely get stuck in the mud.

Though the work is dirty and potentially life-threatening, the average pay of 3,000 pesos (68 dollars) a week is good money in a country where the daily factory wage is typically less than six dollars.

"Outside these walls are rice fields where you have to toil and wait months before harvest. In here you can make your products in an instant. We get paid quickly," Garce said.

Factories such as these employ some 100,000 people in Baliuag and nearby areas of Bulacan province, churning out fireworks of different sizes and calibre.

The louder the explosions, the quirkier the names and the higher the prices they fetch.

Of the street-legal varieties, the "Judas Belt", presumably named after Jesus Christ's disciple-turned-traitor Judas Iscariot, is a string of triangular crackers that pop like a rifle clip emptying in rapid fire.

A longer version has appropriated the Filipino name for python. Revellers wrap them around lamp posts or trees to be set off minutes before the clock strikes midnight to welcome the New Year.

A "fountain" shoots sparks about 2.5 metres (about eight feet) into the air, while a "screaming cow" moos before it explodes in a loud bang.

Locals say a powerful firecracker that can approximate the explosion of a grenade can also be bought on the sly.

Named after the infamous Al Qaeda leader, the (Osama) "bin Laden" is however difficult to find and shopkeepers will not openly admit to selling them.

Prices range from as low as 400 pesos to as high as 12,000 pesos depending on their size and explosive power.

The pyrotechnics industry in the Philippines emerged in 1867, inspired by a Spanish Roman Catholic priest who made small rockets to rouse his parishioners for dawn masses.

He imparted the technology to a man in nearby Santa Maria town named Valentin Santa Ana, who mastered the fiery art and passed it on to his children, according to modern fireworks makers.

His descendants led early moves to regulate the industry after a deadly fire hit a factory in 1966 killing 26 people, but their efforts largely went unsupported.

When the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972 however, he banned the industry in fear that his political foes and dissidents would turn to readily accessible fireworks raw materials for weapons.

The ban drove the industry underground, where artisans unshackled by regulations began to produce ever more powerful firecrackers that attracted many buyers, said Celso Cruz, president of the industry association.

The ban was lifted only in 1992, by which time Bulacan was already a byword. Annual industry sales now hit 700 million pesos, Cruz said.

Nenita Ramos, of family-owned Nation Fireworks, said she hoped sales would pick up to match previous years despite the tight economy.

"We have had people buying truckloads of fireworks, but now sales are a little slow," Ramos said, as she waited for customers at the family shop along a busy highway.

Still she said, the industry has been the main lifeline of Bulacan.

"We have helped a lot of people over the years. This is not just a business, but a family tradition already," she said.

Since starting the business nearly 20 years ago she and her husband Armando have lived comfortably, sending their three children to expensive schools.

But occasional deadly, accidental explosions at small, unlicensed backyard factories have triggered government crackdowns, and stricter safety standards have driven up costs, she said.

European bond market faces another volatile year

28 December 2010 - 05H10

Photo illustration of euro notes. The European bond market is heading for another turbulent year in 2011, with investors groping for direction in the face of an uncertain US recovery and a stubborn debt crisis in the eurozone.

(L-R) IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet talk on December 6, 2010 at the EU headquarters in Brussels. Analysts warn that even with the help of the European Central Bank, which since May has been trying to stabilise the market by buying from banks bonds issued by periphery countries, the eurozone's financial difficulties are likely to persist.

AFP - The European bond market is heading for another turbulent year in 2011, with investors groping for direction in the face of an uncertain US recovery and a stubborn debt crisis in the eurozone.

In 2010 bonds for the first time lost some of their attraction as a safe option, with investors shunning part of the market, according to bond strategist Patrick Jacq of BNP Paribas bank.

German and French bonds were the exception, with their yields falling to their lowest levels as investors who feared for the fate of the US economy saw such assets as a refuge.

But elsewhere sovereign bonds issued by eurozone members had a rough ride in 2010 in response to a debt and deficit debacle in Greece and huge financial pressures on the Irish banking sector.

Both Greece and Ireland, facing sharp hikes in their borrowing costs, eventually had to appeal for a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The perception that European authorities had been slow to act on the Greek crisis rattled the market further, notably as banks held massive amounts of debt bonds issued by Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal, financially weak countries on what became known as the eurozone's "periphery."

Eurozone officials moved faster in response to the Irish banking crisis, determined to shield Portugal and Spain from having to be rescued with outside money.

Analysts now warn that even with the help of the European Central Bank, which since May has been trying to stabilise the market by buying from banks bonds issued by periphery countries, the eurozone's financial difficulties are likely to persist.

"The problem is going to flare up again if demand is insufficient when the peripheral states try to raise money in the market," said Vincent Chaigneau of Societe Generale CIB.

In the new year financial players will be looking closely at Spain's long-term borrowing operations as well as the first emission from the European Financial Stability Facility destined for eurozone states in financial straits.

For economist Patrick Artus of French bank Natixis, the principal risk in the new year is that Spain could find itself unable to finance its debt on the market.

Spain's economy ranks fourth in the eurozone and a rescue would be far bigger than anything seen to date in Europe. The size of its economy is twice that of Greece, Ireland and Portugal combined.

Artus said the focus should now be on ensuring a country's solvency rather than simply its liquidity needs.

Several solutions have been put forward, notably the creation of a permanent, well-endowed rescue fund -- already approved in principle at an EU summit -- and the launch of joint eurozone bonds, which would increase the chance of financially weak countries finding buyers for their debt.

There is likely to be debate as well on whether governments should pursue growth or austerity as a means of securing stability and whether the ECB should step up its bond-buying programme.

Bomb at Rome embassy linked to anarchist attacks

28 December 2010 - 05H17

Italian Carabinierei stand in front of the main entrance of the Greek embassy in Rome on December 27, 2010 after an explosive package was found. Italian police were Tuesday investigating whether an attempted parcel bombing at the Greek embassy in Rome might have been carried out by an anarchist group that targeted two embassies last week.

Graphic locating the embassies targeted by parcel bombs. A parcel bomb found at the Greek embassy in Rome on Monday was similar to packages that went off injuring two people at the Chilean and Swiss missions in a suspected attack by anarchists, police said.

Italian Carabinieri stand in front of the Greek embassy in Rome, where a parcel bomb was found just days after two similar packages went off injuring two workers at the Chilean and Swiss missions in the Italian capital.

Italian firefighters enter the Chilean Embassy in Rome on December 23, 2010. Parcel bomb blasts in the Chilean and Swiss embassies in Rome injured two staffers on December 23, officials said, as Italian prosecutors opened an inquiry for a suspected "attack with terrorist aims."

AFP - Italian police were Tuesday investigating whether an attempted parcel bombing at the Greek embassy in Rome might have been carried out by an anarchist group that targeted two embassies last week.

Investigators said Monday the device at the Greek embassy in Rome bore the hallmarks of a similar attack by anarchists on the Chilean and Swiss missions last week.

The package was "similar to those that exploded last week in the Chilean and Swiss embassies," Italian police spokesman Salvatore Cagnazzo told AFP.

"The mail worker at the embassy opened it but it didn't go off," he said, adding that the package was then defused by bomb disposal experts.

The explosive device was contained in a large padded yellow envelope with a CD case inside and was intended to detonate when opened.

"There's an anarchist group, a terrorist group that wants to send a signal on an international level," the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, told reporters, adding that the city was now on "maximum vigilance."

The interception of the parcel bomb for the Greek embassy was followed by around 10 false alarms at other foreign embassies around Rome.

Greece's ambassador to Italy, Michael Cambanis, was quoted by La Repubblica daily on its website as saying that the parcel bomb had "arrived on Friday but no one opened it because of the Christmas holidays."

A police source in Athens told AFP that cooperation between Italian and Greek police was "closer" after the discovery of the package, while a justice ministry source said: "Italy's judicial authorities have sought Greece's help to determine possible links between Italian and Greek militant groups."

Last Thursday two parcel bombs exploded at the Chilean and Swiss embassies in Rome, injuring a Swiss mail worker and a Chilean diplomat.

Prosecutors on Monday said that their inquiry for suspected "terrorism" over last week's bombs would now include the Greek embassy package.

Last week's blasts were claimed by an Italian anarchist group calling itself the Informal Federation of Anarchy, or FAI under its Italian acronym.

Investigators have said they believe the claim is "reliable".

"We have decided to make our voice heard with words and deeds. Let us destroy the system of domination... Long live anarchy," read a charred note found at the scene of the Chilean embassy blast.

The statement was signed by the "Lambros Fountas Cell" -- a reference to a Greek far-left activist killed in a shoot-out with police in March 2010.

In a suspected anarchist far-left plot in Greece last month, bombs were sent to foreign embassies in Athens and European government leaders.

More than a dozen packages containing explosives were sent in that plot, prompting Greece to suspend international mail for two days. At least four of the packages ignited or exploded, slightly injuring one person.

But the head of Italian police, Antonio Manganelli, on Monday said there was no apparent link between the attacks in Greece and the ones in Rome.

"So far no elements of material links between the wave of parcel bombs in Greece last month and the recent action in our country have emerged," Manganelli was quoted by ANSA news agency as saying.

The United States meanwhile said it was reviewing security at its embassies worldwide and had told its staff to be vigilant when opening mail.

"In Rome, we are monitoring the situation with local law enforcement," said US State Department spokesman Mark Toner.

The FAI has claimed around 30 low-key attacks in Italy in recent years, starting with two small bombs set off in a rubbish bin outside the home in Bologna of then European Commission chief Romano Prodi in 2003.

The targets have been mainly police, prison authorities, immigrant detention centres and European Union institutions. Last week's bombs are believed to be the first attack claimed by the FAI to have injured someone.

New species abound in Peru, but so do threats

28 December 2010 - 05H22

A "Ranitomeya amazonica", a frog with an incredible burst of flames on its head, and contrasting water-patterned legs - one of the species announced by WWF in a new report. Each year, a new bird is found and every four years a new mammal discovered in the Peruvian Amazon, a haven for biodiversity where conservation and danger often go hand in hand.

Graphic on a WWF study reporting the discovery of new species in the Amazon region over the past decade.

Parrots in Peru's Amazon Jungle. Although Peru is known for its Andes mountain range, the Amazon actually covers 60 percent of the country's territory. It is a hotbed of bio-activity and is home to 25,000 species of plants -- 10 percent of the world's stock.

AFP - Each year, a new bird is found and every four years a new mammal discovered in the Peruvian Amazon, a haven for biodiversity where conservation and danger often go hand in hand.

Although Peru is known for its Andes mountain range, the Amazon actually covers 60 percent of the country's territory. It is a hotbed of bio-activity and is home to 25,000 species of plants -- 10 percent of the world's stock.

Thanks to the Amazon, Peru has the world's second-largest bird population (1,800 species) and is among the top five countries for mammals (515 species) and reptiles (418 species).

This year alone, scientists stumbled upon a previously unknown leech and a new type of mosquito.

The animal population has grown in recent years, namely adding a mini poison dart frog with a fire-red head and blue legs (Ranitomeya amazonica), a purple-throated Sunangel hummingbird (Heliangelus viola) and a "tyrannosaurus leech" with eight teeth (Tyrannobdella reina).

More than 1,200 new species of plants or animals have been discovered in 10 years in the Amazon, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature. But paradoxically, the novel species are often discovered during the very activities that threaten the Amazon the most.

"Most of these discoveries don't happen during scientific expeditions, which are often costly. They most often come when workers are digging exploration sites for oil, mining or lumber companies," said WWF Peru's Amazon program director Michael Valqui.

"This type of discovery is also simultaneously endangering the species that is being discovered in its one and only habitat."

Peru, home to one of the biggest forest lands -- 700,000 square kilometers (270,270 square miles) -- is also a magnet for resource extraction.

The number of concessions granted has doubled since 2006 to cover 16 percent of the territory, according to the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America.

At the same time, Peru boasts of being on the cutting edge of conservation, with 15 percent of its territory under protected status.

"And we're aiming for 30 percent," said Environment Minister Antonio Brack.

Environmentalists, though, worry about the future of biodiversity and the species living outside these protected zones.

"There are no clear signals as to what the country intends to do to protect biodiversity," said Ivan Lanegra, representative of the influential government-funded Peruvian ombudsman office.

Gerard Herail of France's IRD research and development institute in Lima noted that "a mining or hydrocarbons firm is not innately destructive. The key is whether or not it is 'clean'," or uses cleaner methods and technologies.

More species are disappearing than are being discovered around the world, noted Ernesto Raez, who heads the Sustainable Development Center at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima.

"In other words, species are disappearing before we discover them," he added.

But the IRD says the very context of their disappearance allows the group to "develop biodiversity conservation strategies," such as those deployed successfully for the huge arapaima or paiche fish (Arapaima gigas), one of the largest freshwater fish in the world.

Twenty-one species remain in "critical danger" of extinction in Peru, according to 2004 numbers, including the short-tailed chinchilla (Chinchilla brevicaudata) and the sharp-eared bat (Tompoeas ravus). The leaf-eared mouse (phyllotis andinum) is believed to have already disappeared.

The Lima gecko (Phyllodactylus sentosus), a minuscule nocturnal lizard also in critical danger, illustrates the sometimes complex relationship between threat and conservation.

The gecko finds its habitat in the darkest corners of the huacas, pre-Hispanic burial grounds or ritual sites that dot Lima and the coast.

"But archeologists' maintenance work, crucial for conservation, is exactly what's destroying the gecko's habitat" and triggering its downfall, said Valqui.

Japan's deflation persists, but rising output gives hope

28 December 2010 - 05H26

File photo of pedestrians in Tokyo. Japan's consumer prices slid last month as deflation kept a grip on the ailing economy, data showed Tuesday, but an uptick in factory output provided a glimmer of hope.

Chart showing Japan's industrial output, which rose 1.0 percent in November from the previous month.

File photo of Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who described the yen's recent rise -- the unit was sitting at 82.67 against the dollar by mid-morning -- as "one-sided" and threatened to intervene if currency markets are hit by "excessive volatility".

File photo of newly assembled Toyota Prius hybrid vehicles parked at the company's plant in the city of Toyota, Aichi Prefecture. There has been a pickup in auto production, which has been supported by the government's just-ended incentive programme for purchases of "green cars" such as Toyota's hybrid Prius.

AFP - Japan's consumer prices slid last month as deflation kept a grip on the ailing economy, data showed Tuesday, but an uptick in factory output provided a glimmer of hope.

The figures came as Japan's stuttering recovery is hobbled by a strong yen, which hurts the key export sector, and after Tokyo last week forecast that growth will slow to a real 1.5 percent next year from 3.1 percent this year.

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda described the yen's recent rise -- the unit was sitting at 82.67 against the dollar by mid-morning -- as "one-sided" and threatened to intervene if currency markets are hit by "excessive volatility".

Japan, long hampered by weak domestic demand, saw its core consumer price index fall for a 21st straight month in November, dropping 0.5 percent from a year ago, although slightly less than the 0.6 percent experts had predicted.

The stubborn price drops, which hurt companies and cost jobs, indicate Japan will find it hard to beat deflation alone, given factors such as its shrinking population, said HSBC Securities chief economist Seiji Shiraishi.

"Deflation may ease if the global economic conditions prove strong, (and) help Japan's external demand," which could help boost Japanese exports and eventually rekindle domestic demand, he told Dow Jones Newswires.

Japan has long conceded that its battle against deflation has been difficult. Although the government predicts the CPI will stop falling in mid-2011, it said this would not mean the defeat of chronic deflation.

Despite the long-term woes, there was a more immediate ray of hope in the first rise in industrial output for half a year, with factory production in November up 1.0 percent from the previous month.

The reading matched market expectations and reflected a pickup in auto production, which has been supported by the government's just-ended incentive programme for purchases of "green cars" such as Toyota's hybrid Prius.

Output in electronics parts, mobile telephones and machinery parts also helped lift overall production, much of it similarly boosted by various public assistance programmes, the industry ministry said.

Government stimulus measures also included subsidy programmes for purchases of environmentally friendly appliances such as flat-screen TVs.

The ministry also said it expected factory production to continue rising -- by 3.4 percent month on month in December and 3.7 percent in January -- with steel products and auto parts seen to go up in tandem with auto production.

HSBC's Shiraishi said the ministry's forecasts seemed "bit too strong" but served as a "positive sign" going forward.

Satoru Osanai, an economist at Daiwa Institute of Research, also said the forecast seemed a little optimistic, but added that it may be achieved if foreign economies improve significantly.

But Osanai cautioned that the fading effects of stimulus programmes in China -- Japan's top trade partner -- posed worries for Japanese exports.

In separate data Tuesday, the unemployment remained at 5.1 percent in November, unchanged from the previous month and matching market expectations.