In This Edition

 

Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzgan Kazykhanov tells the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that that Osama Bin Laden's death is not yet victory over terror.

 

A worker at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant dies, bringing the death toll at the complex to three since the disaster happened.

 

Greenpeace urges the Japanese government to start an investigation after high levels of radiation were found in seaweed off the coast of Fukushima.

 

Stormy performances by the German economy in the first quarter highlight the gap between the Euro zone's strengths and weaknesses.

 

 

Hot Issue Reports

 

Bin Laden's Death Is Not Victory over Terror Yet: SCO Rotating Chair

Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzgan Kazykhanov has warned that Osama Bin Laden's death is not yet victory over terror.

 

He made the remark when meeting with his counterparts from members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Almaty,Kazakstan on Saturday.

 

Kazykhanov, current rotating chair of SCO, says the killing of bin Laden by the U.S. may trigger a backlash from his supporters and a "new wave of terror" across a giant area surrounding Afghanistan.

 

"Craving for revenge, the supporters of al Qaeda, the Taliban movement and other terrorist and extremist organizations may cause a new wave of terror as they attempt to avenge for the death of their leader."

 

According to Kazykhanov, the situation in Afghanistan will keep tension high in the region and will remain a source of terror, extremism and illegal trafficking of drugs and weapons.

 

He also said Pakistan and India are seeking to become full SCO members, and the SCO summit to be held in Kazakhstan next month is expected to adopt criteria for granting permanent membership in the regional body.

 

The SCO was founded in 2001 to boost regional security and promote economic cooperation among its members. With China and Russia being main players, it also unites the mostly Muslim Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and occupies three-fifths of Eurasia, populated by over 1.5 billion, or a quarter of the world's population.

 

Mali Foreign Minister Urges Joint Efforts to Fight Terror

Mali's Foreign Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga has urged North African countries bordering the Sahara Desert to back a plan to jointly fight al Qaeda's north African wing as smuggled heavy weapons from Libya risked handing the group further impetus in the region.

 

The fallout from the civil war in Libya has until recently been confined to waves of returning migrants.

 

But governments in the Sahel region believe al Qaeda fighters in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, have received convoys of weapons looted from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's abandoned arms caches.

 

Maiga said there was "no doubt" SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, anti-air guns that can be mounted on trucks, and small arms were entering the country.

 

AQIM is a mostly autonomous wing that sprung from the Algerian Salafist movement in 2007. The group, believed to have a few hundred members, has taken advantage of poor cross-border coordination, weak governance and poverty to mount sporadic attacks on local armies and kidnap westerners, earning millions of dollars in ransoms.

 

Regional foreign ministers and armed forces' chiefs are scheduled to meet next week in Bamako to review their coordination efforts.

 

Maiga issued a warning.

 

"AQIM will remain a threat for the countries of the region and a danger for our societies. That's why we will increase regional cooperation. Because as long as we don't have complementary and coordinated action, we won't be able to win against these groups."

 

Maiga who was on a four-day visit to Paris, met senior French officials, including the foreign and interior ministers, to discuss the situation in the region.

 

France, the former colonial ruler, is Mali's fourth largest donor, a vital source of income in one of the world's poorest countries.

 

India Increases Aid to Afghanistan

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced on Friday his government would give another 500 million U.S. dollars in aid to Afghanistan.

 

Singh made the remark when he addressed the Afghan parliament during a two-day visit aimed at renewing Indian ties with Afghanistan.

 

"We will increase development outlets towards capacity building and skill development. This will include more scholarships for Afghan students to study in India."

 

Singh pledged the sum for development projects in Afghanistan, taking what he said was the total amount of Indian aid in recent years to 2 billion US dollars.

 

India is Afghanistan's largest regional donor.

 

Singh arrived in Kabul on Thursday, his first visit to the Afghan capital in six years.

 

Singh also backed Kabul's peace plan to reconcile with Taliban-led insurgents, urging Afghanistan to shake off outside guidance and pursue its own future.

 

Pakistan, which has gone to war with India three times since 1947, has been vying for a central role in a negotiated settlement in the affairs of its neighbor Afghanistan.

 

Kabul and Islamabad last month agreed to give Pakistan's security establishment a formal role in any peace talks.

 

Exiled Musharraf Plans to Return to Pakistan

Pakistan's exiled former president Pervez Musharraf plans to return to his country next year to run in the 2013 elections despite warrants for his arrest.

 

Speaking to journalists in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Musharraf said it is his final decision to return home.

 

"...if at all the circumstances in Pakistan require me to go earlier, I will certainly go to Pakistan even earlier than the 23rd of March 2012."

 

Musharraf faces an arrest warrant in connection with the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, but he has said he has not tried to broker a deal to avoid arrest.

 

"We will fight all cases in the courts, and no, I am not such a fugitive, and I have to go back for my own reasons, for reasons of the nation, the state and the people of Pakistan who are suffering. And, therefore, I will go irrespective of whether its cases or there is more extreme danger to me, I will go."

 

The announcement comes amid growing turmoil in Pakistan that the United States suspects its ally knew where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was as well as information about the first revenge attack for his killing, which claimed 80 lives on Friday.

 

A Power Plant Worker Died at Fukushima

A worker at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant died on Saturday, bringing the death toll at the complex to three since a massive earthquake and tsunami in March.

 

The cause of the death was unknown. The man, in his 60s, was employed by Tokyo Electric and started working at the plant on Friday. He was exposed to 0.17 millisieverts of radiation on Saturday.

 

The Japanese government's maximum level of exposure for male workers at the plant is 250 millisieverts for the duration of the effort to bring it under control.

 

The worker fell ill 50 minutes after starting to work at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday and brought to the plant's medical room unconscious.

 

The company's general manager Jun'ichi Matsumoto described the incident.

 

"At 7:03 this morning, we brought a member of the supporting workers that fell ill while moving gear around to the infirmary at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. As he had lost consciousness, he was moved at 7:35 am to the J-village, and after being looked at by a doctor there, he was transported to Iwaki General Hospital at 8:35."

 

The worker was later confirmed dead.

 

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11 triggered cooling system malfunctions at the plant, and caused radiation to leak into the atmosphere and the ocean.

 

Engineers are still struggling to bring the plant under control. Two Tokyo Electric employees went missing while patrolling the plant soon after the quake and were later found dead.

 

Japanese Protesters Demand a Complete Halt of Nuclear Reactors

Meanwhile, hundreds of activists marched to the Tokyo Electric headquarters and Chubu Electric Power's Tokyo offices to demand an immediate halt to all nuclear power stations in the nation.

 

Protestors say that they fear nuclear power following the Fukushima accident.

 

27-year-old Miyako Tsukagoshi is one of the organizers of the protest.

 

"I am here because I am worried everyday as Japan has a lot of earthquakes and you can never know when things like this can happen again."

 

Tokyo Electric is set to review its timetable for stabilizing Fukushima on Tuesday and officials indicated that the initial progress targets could slip due to the recent discovery of a hole in reactor number 1.

 

Meanwhile, Chubu Electric has also completed the total shutdown of two operating nuclear reactors at the Hamaoka plant in central Japan after Prime Minister Naoto Kan called for its immediate closure on safety grounds.

 

But protestors like Tsukagoshi are not completely relieved by such move.

 

"They are vowing to restart the reactors once they've built the tsunami walls, so we can't be complacent."

 

Protesters read out and presented their petitions to the company's officials and demanded a complete halt to the Chubu Electric's nuclear reactor.

 

Greenpeace Warns Japan about Highly Radioactive Seaweed

The international environment organization Greenpeace has urged the Japanese government to start an investigation after high levels of radiation were found in seaweed off the coast of Fukushima.

 

Greenpeace said it conducted radiation tests on 22 seaweed samples and found 10 with radiation levels of 10,000 becquerel per kilogram, far exceeding the official safety limit of 500 becquerel per kilogram.

 

Ike Teuling is a Greenpeace radiation expert.

 

"Although the Japanese government gave us only very limited permission to do our marine research, we did find radioactive seaweed with alarmingly high levels of radiation."

 

Goshi Hosono, Advisor to the Japanese prime minister, said although the government is hesitant to jump to conclusions based on the reports by Greenpeace, it will take appropriate action to follow up on the research.

 

"We will not ignore the research conducted by Greenpeace. We will face the results, and if necessary, conduct follow-up research."

 

Greenpeace will conduct radiation tests to monitor a variety of marine samples, including seaweed, fish and shellfish. The full results are expected next week.

 

German Economy Looks Rosy

Stormy performances by the German economy in the first quarter have been good news for Berlin but also highlight the yawning gap between the euro zone's strengths and weaknesses.

 

Europe's largest economy grew by a startling 1.5 percent in the first three months of the year, with France paling slightly in comparison with one-percent growth. Economists previously forecast 0.9-percent growth for Germany and 0.6-percent for France.

 

Germany and France account for nearly half the region's GDP. Both nations bounced back from a modest showing in the last quarter of 2010 when bad weather affected their agricultural output.

 

The euro got a lift from the latest German GDP figure.

 

Jens Nagel, Managing Director of the German Export Association, called the economic growth "spectacular." He said Germany looks set to continue riding high.

 

"I would say the perspectives for this year are quite rosy still. We do not think that these spectacular growth rates can be reached forever, but I think that this tremendous pace will go back to a more quiet growth in the second half of the year, but still grow. The German economy will grow by over two percent, I would say, in this year."

 

In its latest report on Europe, the International Monetary Fund said it was ready to give Greece more aid if the country needed it and urged the European Central Bank to take a cautious approach to interest rate increases.

 

Egyptians Welcome Detention of Mubarak's Wife

Egypt's anti-graft agency said on Friday it had questioned former President Hosni Mubarak and his wife during a probe into corruption charges and ordered both detained pending further investigations.

 

Investigators interrogated Mubarak, who has denied wrongdoing, for more than three hours on Thursday evening in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. They questioned his wife Suzanne on Friday and detained her for 15 days.

 

Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square welcomed the news.

 

Hassan Ahmed, a member of the al-Tagamoa opposition party, was one of them.

 

"All of Egypt's people are happy with anything concerning the implementation of the law. For Suzanne to take 15 days under what is lawful; this is something that makes us happy. We hope for a fair trial and for all ex-figures of corruption led by Hosni Mubarak and his entire family to be tried."

 

Security and judiciary sources said Mrs. Mubarak would be transferred to a Cairo prison.

 

It was the first detention order for the ousted president's wife, although the public prosecutor had already ordered Mubarak detained on April 13 as part of a separate investigation into charges of abuse of public funds and the killing of protesters.

 

The 83-year-old ex leader, ousted by a popular uprising in February, has been staying at a hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh since he suffered health problems during initial questioning.

 

The prosecutor last month ordered Mubarak to be transferred to a Cairo prison hospital, but said it would take at least a month to make the necessary preparations.

 

Central Gov't and Locals Try to Save Shanghainese

The Shanghai dialect has been declining partly because of the nationwide promotion of Mandarin. An official from the Ministry of Education now says the promotion of local dialects and Mandarin don't run counter to the another. As Chengcheng reports, Shanghai residents are coming up with practical ways to stop their dialect from dying out.

 

Latest figures indicate that two in every five residents in Shanghai are immigrants from other provinces. This is why Putonghua, or standard Chinese, has become the common language among Shanghai locals.

 

"When you go out nowadays, it's more convenient to speak Putonghua than Shanghai dialect. Because in Shanghai, you'll meet people from all over China."

 

Huang Qiqing is a 27-year-old Shanghainese. Members of his generation can still speak fluent Shanghai dialect, but he says younger people do not.

 

"Most school teachers are now immigrants, and they only speak Putonghua here, so students can't learn the Shanghai dialect from them. And when kids get home, their parents seldom speak the dialect because they get used to using Putonghua in their workplaces."

 

China started to promote the use of Putonghua at the end of the 1950s. Thirty years later, after the country's opening up, the Shanghai dialect almost disappeared from schools and radio stations.

 

Zhong Fulan, a professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai, specializes in local history and culture. He used to produce a popular Shanghainese radio show called "A Fu Gen" that covered local news. But Zhong says the program eventually was cancelled as more and more people adopted Putonghua.

 

"As a united country, it's only sensible for China to promote Putonghua. The idea of common language emerged during the rule of Emperor Qin Shi Huang two thousand years ago. But different dialects carry the unique culture of every locality, and that's what makes our country splendid as a whole."

 

Prof. Zhong hails the moves by local kindergartens and primary schools to add courses about the Shanghai dialect and culture. But he says everyone needs to think on a larger scale to reach a wider base.

 

"Of the television channels in Shanghai, there should be increased programme in dialects. Such shows can talk about Shanghai's traditions in the good old days and people's everyday lives nowadays."

 

Whether the shows Prof Zhong suggests will finally get the green light remains to be seen, but authorities are now beginning to collect recordings of dialects nationwide to create a voice database as part of the efforts to preserve the country's linguistic diversity.

 

For CRI, I'm chengcheng.

 

China Daily: Lawmakers Should Clarify Drunk Driving Statute

 

Recent remarks by the vice president of the Supreme People's Court that not all drunk driving cases should be considered criminal offenses have caused widespread concern among citizens.

 

While China's vehicle ownership has risen at an explosive rate in recent years, the number of fatal traffic accidents in the country has long been the highest worldwide.

 

Against this backdrop, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, approved a newly amended Criminal Law in late February. It stipulates that all drunk driving incidents should be considered criminal offenses, regardless of the severity of the consequences.

 

But Yang Tao, a commentator at the "Shanghai Morning Post" argues that the newly revised regulation contradicts the existing General Principle of Criminal Law, which states that only offenses with severe social ramifications should be criminalized.

 

An editorial in "China Daily" says that the remarks by Zhang Jun, Vice President of the Supreme People's Court, could probably create confusion in the enforcement of the newly amended Criminal Law. Because of Zhang's position, his words have sparked public suspicion that differential treatment may leave room for some law enforcement officers to apply their own subjective and even wanton interpretations of the law when they apprehend drunk drivers or decide to mete out punishments to them.

 

The editorial further says that under such circumstances, people have reason to believe there is a possibility that some "privileged" persons would be able to exploit the confusion to avoid criminal punishment even if they are caught drunk driving.

 

The editorial concludes that to maintain the seriousness and authority of the newly amended Criminal Law, the Supreme People's Court should clarify the drunk driving issue to reduce or avoid unnecessary confusion and administrative intervention into judicial procedure.