The World in Brief (3/16/06)

Improving rural living conditions vital, China’s Wen says

Tim Johnson, Knight Ridder… Improving rural living conditions vital, China’s Wen says

Tim Johnson, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BEIJING – China’s fate depends on lifting some 750 million rural people from poor economic conditions, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao said Tuesday in a rare meeting with reporters in which he also lashed out at local Communist Party officials who grab farm land.

Many local Communist Party officials have confiscated land for development, sometimes enriching themselves in the process and enraging Chinese farmers, who depend on small plots.

“We must give adequate and due compensation to farmers whose land is seized,” Wen said. “We must also … mete out harsh and strict punishment against those who breach the laws and regulations and illicitly seize the land of the farmers.”

Wen spoke shortly after the legislature approved increasing annual spending by 14 percent, to $42 billion, to help China’s peasants deal with the crushing costs of health care and other social and economic problems. China’s peasants earn barely a third of what their urban counterparts make, and rural unrest has been rising. More than 200 protests a day occur in China.

If China’s leaders can strengthen development of the countryside, it will boost domestic demand, Wen said, and “build China’s economy and society on more solid ground.”

Wen stopped short of saying that China would allow peasants to own the land they till, saying only that they’ll have the right to farm it “forever.” Farmers have long leases, but the state owns the land.

High-ranking member of Saddam’s regime alleges abuse

Matthew Schofield, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein’s former vice president testified Monday that U.S. troops kicked and beat him for two weeks after his arrest in August 2003, in an effort to force him to tell them where Saddam was hiding.

Taha Yassin Ramadan, who’s being tried with Saddam and five others for murder and other crimes, said interrogators also forced him to walk continually, beating him if he stopped, and stepped on his hands when he prayed.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a top military spokesman in Baghdad, viewed the allegations skeptically. He said Ramadan would have had access to health and human rights officials throughout his imprisonment and could have mentioned the charges to them.

“We will investigate the allegations appropriately,” Johnson said. “But at this time, I don’t believe this allegation has merit.”

The prosecutor in the trial also asked that the court investigate the allegations. Torture “is a crime, and the court should take it into consideration,” said chief Iraqi prosecutor Jafar al-Musawi.

But it was unclear what the court would do. Chief Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman noted that Ramadan’s 30-minute statement didn’t directly address the charges against him.

Growing strength of Pakistani Taliban worries U.S. officials

Ken Moritsugu, Knight Ridder Newspapers

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A Pakistan-based movement inspired by the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan is growing along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, challenging U.S.-led efforts to stamp out insurgents in Afghanistan and hunt down Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.

Reports from the South Waziristan region, which is closed to foreign journalists, indicate that local leaders who also call themselves Taliban are setting up offices, recruiting followers and, in some places, acting as local judges.

In Wana, the regional capital, about 20 miles from the Afghan border, these Pakistani Taliban are laying down a strict code of conduct: Men are forbidden to shave, for example, and barbers, fearing punishment, are said to no longer offer the service.

Pakistan, under U.S. pressure, has deployed 80,000 troops to the border region to try to suppress the movement. While some Taliban encampments have been destroyed, their continued presence illustrates the limited success of the three-year military campaign.

“I think the government will be able to quell, but it will not be able to root out, the insurgency,” said Afrasiab Khattak, a leader of the Awami National Party, which opposes the rule of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president.

The movement’s growing strength deeply concerns U.S. officials. President George W. Bush raised the issue when he met with Musharraf last weekend in Islamabad, as did Gen. John Abizaid, the top American commander for the Middle East and Central Asia, on a follow-up visit last week.

It turns out there is no norm for DNA, scientists say

Faye Flam, Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA – It was a nice idea that we’re all genetically 99.9 percent identical, but new research says it’s not so simple.

The old thinking held that, coiled in our cells, we all carry the same instruction book with just a few alternative spellings. But upon closer scrutiny, it appears our DNA is full of long strings of genetic code that are copied sometimes hundreds of times, the number of copies varying wildly from person to person.

And each of us is apparently missing quite a few large chunks of DNA. Other large segments of genetic code are misplaced on their chromosomes or pasted in backward. Not that there’s any one designated normal arrangement – we’re all just different.

As this all was becoming clear over the last several years, scientists expressed some surprise that the human genetic code is such a disorganized mess.

“This changes how we think about evolution and, in some respects, disease,” said Evan Eichler, a researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle. “That’s the part that’s exciting.”

This newfound variability may help explain not only differences that affect health, but also how we and other living things have evolved. Scientists are coming across places in our chromosomes called genetic “hot spots,” critical for evolution to continue reshaping the human race.

Port controversy stirs wide security concern

Herb Jackson, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)

WASHINGTON – The Amtrak tunnel that runs under the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., half a mile south of Union Station, may not seem to have any connection with a Dubai company’s attempt to buy terminal operations at six American ports.

Members of Congress had no trouble tying the two last week, however.

Democratic senators compared the Bush administration’s casual treatment of what they thought were the dire security implications of the Dubai purchase to the lack of federal attention being paid to the Amtrak tunnel’s vulnerability to terrorists.

Similarly, the Dubai card also was played by Democrats and Republicans battling against a proposed Bush administration regulation to allow for more foreign control of airlines.

Suddenly, the Dubai deal has become a shorthand justification for any congressional effort to spend more money for security or restrict foreign ownership of industries or facilities.

Democrats argue that the Dubai purchase showed the American public that President Bush was not taking terrorism threats seriously enough and are extending that argument to say that other threats also are being ignored. The natural solution, therefore, is for Congress to step up.

“The president says trust him on security,” Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said Thursday. “Well, you saw the vote yesterday in the House and the vote about to take place here. Neither Democrats nor Republicans trust him on security. His administration has shown a dangerous incompetence … whether it’s Katrina or the ports or, I would argue, on rail.”

Florida State prof reduces longest English novel by two-thirds

Jennifer Peltz, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

It was a smash in its day, so much so that readers beseeched the author to spare its seemingly doomed heroine.

It was an influence for decades, reflected in the works of such well-known writers as Jane Austen.

It’s still considered a classic. But try to find a friend who’s actually read it – all 1,536 meticulously wrought, antiquely writerly, multisyllabically confessional pages of it. For all its noteworthy qualities, “Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady” is perhaps most known – and sometimes dreaded – as arguably the longest single English-language novel ever published. Even its author admitted himself “a poor pruner” of words.

If that’s so, well, Sheila Ortiz-Taylor has some shears.

An English professor at Florida State University and a novelist in her own right, Ortiz-Taylor spent two years delicately trimming away close to two-thirds of Samuel Richardson’s behemoth. Penguin Books recently published the 576-page result, hoping to renew interest in a 1748 novel with themes that still reverberate today: love, lust, dignity, morals and family dynamics.

“It’s unforgettable,” Ortiz-Taylor said.

“Clarissa” charts a young woman’s struggles to protect her integrity in the face of a scheming family, a deceitful suitor and societal pressures.

With her family pushing her to marry a rich man she can’t stand, the heroine turns to a charming but dissolute admirer. He spirits her away, bent on seducing her. Though desire tugs at her staunch morality, she refuses to submit, and the relationship spirals into a ruinous battle of wills.