International Herald Tribune 20130427, International New York Times
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HOWANARCHY
OF PUNK LEFT
ABIGMARKON
HIGH FASHION
PAGE 15
|
WEEKEND ARTS
HAUTEHOSTELS
TRY TOBREAK
FREE FROM
THEHERD
PAGE 21
|
TRAVEL
WEEKEND
ADEFECTOR’S
ANSWERS FOR
NORTHKOREA
PAGE 6
|
VIEWS
DEFYING
THEWILL OF
WILLA CATHER
PAGE 20
|
BOOKS
WATCHMAKERS
FIND CHINA
RUSH IS FADING
PAGE 9
|
BUSINESS ASIA
..
THE GLOBAL EDITION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 27-28, 2013
GLOBAL.NYTIMES.COM
Tu r na r ound
for deflation
in Japan is
distant goal
HONG KONG
Questions
mount as
Bangladesh
sifts rubble
DHAKA, BANGLADESH
Central bank forecasts
2% inflation target won’t
be reached before 2015
With toll from collapse
above 300, many ask
why fears were ignored
BY BETTINA WASSENER
Deflation remains firmly entrenched in
Japan, figures showed Friday, as the
central bank projected that its targeted
level for inflation was still some years
off, underscoring that there are no quick
fixes for one of the world’s largest econ-
omies.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took
office last December, has made the fight
against deflation — the damaging fall in
prices, profits and wages that has
dogged Japan for most of the past 15
years — a main part of his economic
policy. He pressed the central bank to
commit to a target of 2 percent annual
inflation, considered by many econo-
mists a healthy level.
On Friday, the central bank, the Bank
of Japan, under the leadership of its new
governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, put a date
on that target: 2015 or early 2016.
‘‘Various indicators are showing
signs that inflation expectations are
heightening as a trend,’’ Mr. Kuroda
said in a news conference Friday, Reu-
ters reported. ‘‘Business and household
sentiment is improving.’’
On Friday, the central bank raised its
growth forecasts for this year and next.
The bank said the economy would
gradually accelerate to 1.6 percent
growth in the fiscal year that ends in
March 2016. That is up from the bank’s
BY JULFIKAR ALI MANIK,
STEVEN GREENHOUSE
AND JIM YARDLEY
As rescuers struggled Friday to reach
survivors in one of the worst manufac-
turing disasters in history, pointed
questions were being raised about why
a Bangladeshi factory building had not
been padlocked after terrified workers
notified the police, government officials
and a powerful garment industry group
about cracks in the walls.
As the death toll rose above 300, the
owner of the collapsed building, the
eight-story Rana Plaza, was in hiding,
and the police and industry leaders were
blaming him for having offered false as-
surances to factory bosses that the struc-
turewas sound, leading to the decision to
allow 3,000 workers to return to work.
Pressure continued to build on West-
ern companies that had promised after
a deadly fire in November to take steps
to ensure the safety of the Bangladeshi
factories that make the goods the
companies sell. Activists combing
through the rubble of the Rana Plaza
building had already discovered labels
and documents linking the factories
there to major European and U.S.
SAMYEH/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Bird flu
ApoultrymarketinTaipei.AsiancountriesurgedvigilanceagainstaspreadofH7N9birdfluafterTaiwanreportedacaseofthestrain,whichhaskilled22people.
Stakes high
as Germany
slips toward
recession
FRANKFURT
BY JACK EWING
No company so symbolizes German in-
dustrial might as Daimler, the giant
maker of Mercedes-Benz autos and
trucks. So when the company said in the
past week that it, too, had finally been
caught in the downdraft of the Euro-
pean economic crisis, it was an ominous
sign for all of the Continent, if not the
whole world.
German exporters like Daimler have
been bastions of stability on a continent
burdened with shaky banks, dysfunc-
tional governments and legions of un-
employed youth — not to mention the
worst auto industry slump in two de-
cades. But Daimler’s glum forecast for
2013 was the latest evidence that Ger-
many and other relatively healthy coun-
tries like Austria and Finland risk fall-
ing into the recession that has long
afflicted their southern neighbors.
The slowdown in Germany was fore-
shadowed bymonths of declining indus-
trial output, said Carl B. Weinberg, chief
other big markets for German exports
of consumer products, cars and sophis-
ticated machine tools, industrial robots
and construction equipment are finally
taking their toll.
Just one more consecutive quarter of
shrinking economic output and Ger-
many would officially enter a recession.
The same is true of Belgium, France,
Luxembourg and Austria and even of
Sweden and Finland. The Netherlands
has already suffered two quarters of de-
clining gross domestic product.
‘‘When things are going down,
the multiplier is very strong.’’
economist of High Frequency Econom-
ics in Valhalla, NewYork. ‘‘The E.U. has
made Europe a much more cohesive
economy, which is good when things are
going up,’’ he said. ‘‘But when things
are going down, the multiplier is very
strong. An outgoing tide lowers all
ships.’’
The region’s overall economic weak-
ness and slowing demand in China and
‘‘Various indicators are
showing signs that inflation
expectations are heightening
as a trend.’’
projection of 1 percent growth in the
year that ended inMarch 2013.
‘‘Japan’s economy has stopped weak-
ening and has shown some signs of pick-
ing up,’’ the Bank of Japan said in its
economic report. ‘‘Looking ahead, it is
expected to return to a moderate recov-
ery path around mid-2013.’’ The bank
cited a likely improvement in domestic
demand as the increased money supply
and other economic measures an-
nounced so far take effect.
However, worse-than-expected infla-
tion data for March, released by the sta-
tistics bureau Friday, underlined the
challenges ahead. Core consumer
prices, which exclude food, fell 0.5 per-
cent compared with March 2012, the
fifth consecutive month of year-on-year
declines.
JAPAN, PAGE 10
RECESSION, PAGE 11
KEVIN FRAYER/AP
Waiting with a picture of a missing rela-
tive at the site in Bangladesh on Friday.
Millionaires’
clash over child support spans continents
brands, like Benetton, Cato Fashions,
the Children’s Place, Mango and others.
PVH, the parent company of Calvin
Klein and TommyHilfiger, and Tchibo, a
German retailer, have endorsed a plan
in which Western retailers would fi-
nance fire safety efforts and structural
improvements in Bangladeshi factories
— although they first want other
companies to sign on.
Wal-Mart Stores has refused to join
that effort. But in January, it announced
that it would demand that factories
quickly correct any safety violations
and would dismiss any contractor that
BANGLADESH, PAGE 4
Her boyfriend, Andrew Cader, a
former Goldman Sachs executive and
part owner of the Tampa Bay Rays
baseball franchise, is accused of con-
spiringwithMs. Bond to hide her true fi-
nancial condition so that she could se-
cure more than $50,000 a month in child
support payments last December from
aWallStreetfinancier,WarrenG.Licht-
enstein, who has a 5-year-old daughter
withMs. Bond.
Ms. Bond deviously obtained the out-
size child support from a Hong Kong
court to ‘‘improve upon her already
extraordinary life of luxury, privilege
and modest fame,’’ contends the law-
suit, whichwas filed byMr. Lichtenstein
in a U.S. District Court in New York.
That Ms. Bond lives an extraordinary
life of luxury and privilege is not in dis-
pute. The daughter of Sir John R.H.
Bond, the former chairman of the global
banking giant HSBC, Ms. Bond, 43, has
traveled the world as a mountain
climber and extreme athlete. (The law-
suit derisively calls her a ‘‘self-de-
scribed ‘activist and adventurer.’ ’’) Her
family has homes in London, Hong
Kong, Florida and Aspen, Colorado.
Mr. Lichtenstein said that to help Ms.
Bond conceal her actual economic con-
dition and obtain inflated child support
payments, Mr. Cader disguised as loans
millions of dollars in cash gifts he had
given her.
Mr. Cader also characterized the dis-
bursements as loans to avoid paying gift
tax in the United States, according to
NEW YORK
BY PETER LATTMAN
As an accomplished mountaineer who
has scaled many of the world’s highest
peaks, including Mount Everest, Anna-
belle Bond has found herself in some
dicey situations.
NowMs. Bond, a British socialite, finds
herself in a very different sort of predica-
ment — a nasty legal fight between a
former lover and her current one.
ALIMONY, PAGE 10
BUSINESS ASIA
U.S. economic growth picks up
The U.S. economy accelerated in the
first quarter of this year, with output
expanding at an annual pace of 2.5
percent, the Commerce Department
reported on Friday. But the growth fell
short of the 3 percent that forecasters
had been expecting.
PAGE 9
PAGE TWO
A military past
A barbed-wire fence ringing an abandoned bunker in Subic
Bay, once home to a U.S. base and now a special economic zone in the Philippines.
VIEWS
Paul Krugman
The austerity agenda is an expression
of upper-class preferences, wrapped in
an academic facade. What the top 1
percent wants becomes what economic
science says we must do.
PAGE 7
Energy revolution’s dark side
America’s energy revolution will drive
down global energy prices, undercutting
petrostates everywhere and possibly
unleashing unrest, Benjamin Alter and
Edward Fishman write.
PAGE 6
ONLINE
Making the movie
The director Mira Nair explains what
drew her to make ‘‘The Reluctant
Fundamentalist,’’ her new film based
on the novel about a possible terrorist
by the Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid;
what dazzles her about the cultural
scene in Lahore; and what lessons
appear not to have been learned in the
aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
india.blogs.nytimes.com
Japan backs Boeing battery fix
The Japanese authorities have formally
approved Boeing’s repairs to the
batteries on its 787 Dreamliner jets and
declared the aircraft fit for use, paving
the way for two of the biggest buyers of
the plane, which has been grounded
since January, to fly it again.
PAGE 9
Turning cars into power plants
In a project in the United States,
electric cars are equipped with some
additional circuitry and a battery
charger that operates in two directions.
When the cars work with the power
grid, they earn about $5 a day. The
added gadgetry is estimated to add
about $400 to the cost of a car.
PAGE 12
JES AZNAR FOR THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
WORLD NEWS
Chemical weapons in Syria
The White House is more confident that
Syria has used chemical arms.
PAGE 5
Seoul pulling out of complex
South Korea has called home managers
from factories run with the North.
PAGE 4
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SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 27-28, 2013
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
page two
Minding
wealth gap
in Britain
a stubborn recession, they have be-
come ‘‘much more cross,’’ Ms. Har-
greaves said.
‘‘When the crisis hit in 2008, people
got extremely angry over bankers’ pay,
and then that got translated to chief ex-
ecutive pay,’’ she said. ‘‘Now we have
made it even more public, and that has
made people even more angry. So we
did a touch a public nerve, really.’’
During the past 10 years, while execu-
tive pay was rising about 10 percent to 15
percent a year, most salaries in Britain
were not keeping up with inflation. New
precarious employment schemes ap-
peared on the market, like ‘‘zero hours’’
contracts that commit workers to jobs
with fluctuating hours, and fluctuating
pay. According to the High Pay Center,
200,000 people in the British workforce
are now employed on that basis.
The sense of insecurity has crept into
the upper reaches of ‘‘middle Eng-
land.’’ Ms. Hargreaves recently spoke
to a partner in a major auditing firm
whose daughter, a university graduate,
couldn’t find a job, only an unpaid
three-month internship. ‘‘He was abso-
lutely furious,’’ she said. ‘‘It had
altered his view of the issue.’’
The High Pay Center has steered
clear of such radical notions as a cap on
executive pay, which, as Ms. Har-
greaves said, is ‘‘anathema to a liberal
English tradition.’’ Ms. Hargreaves is
also dubious about the effectiveness of
the European Parliament’s recent vote
to limit bankers’ annual bonuses to one
year’s base salary, which can be easily
circumvented by an increase in salaries.
Instead, it has focused on using argu-
ments that make sense from a business
perspective. ‘‘If you can say that high
pay is hurting business and the market
economy, then you can accomplish
more,’’ she said. ‘‘We want business to
adopt these measures, not force them
on them.’’
Increasingly, shareholder activists
have joined the fight, focusing on so-
called performance pay, which often, in
fact, is out of line with company earn-
ings and investors’ dividends. In the
past year or so, it seems boardrooms
have heard the grumbling. A report by
the consulting firm Towers Watson, re-
cently quoted by The Financial Times,
found that of 35 British chief executives
who had disclosed their 2013 salaries, 11
had had their pay frozen, while the me-
dian increase was 2.5 percent.
Ms. Hargreaves worries that corpo-
rate bosses may be temporarily reining
in their excesses, waiting for the public
storm to pass. She is pushing for more
structural reforms, specifically a re-
quirement that one or two employees
be appointed to remuneration commit-
tees that are now stacked with current
and former executives ‘‘who live in
their own bubble.’’
The idea is to move closer to the Ger-
man model, in which workers have
seats on company boards and where
executive pay at the DAX 30 companies
is now 90 times the average salary —
compared with the United States,
where chief executives at Fortune 500
companies now earn 324 times the av-
erage salary.
In Ms. Hargreaves’s view, the
Thatcher era ushered in an ‘‘American-
ization’’ of British business that ‘‘made
it respectable to be greedy and to
flaunt your wealth.’’ Lost in the equa-
tion was a sense of responsibility, and
fairness, which is what she and others
are now trying to restore.
‘‘People say you can’t interfere with
the market,’’ she said, ‘‘but the market
is a human construct. You can’t let it
run riot.’’
E-MAIL:
pagetwo@iht.com
Celestine
Bohlen
LETTER FROM EUROPE
LONDON
It was just a coincidence that
the year 1979 came up in conversation
this past week with Deborah Har-
greaves, director of the High Pay Cen-
ter, a think tank that monitors high pay
in modern Britain.
That was, of course, the year that
Margaret Thatcher first took office, a
date much in the news and on the
minds of fellow Britons this month as a
bitterly divided country remembered
the late Tory leader with a startling
mix of praise and invective.
It was also the year when, according
to Ms. Hargreaves, a gap between the
rich and poor in Britain began to open
up, widening to the point where income
inequality today is a burning issue for
those not just at the bottom of the eco-
nomic ladder but also across the spec-
trum— shareholders, underemployed
workers, unemployed university gradu-
ates, even their well-to-do parents.
‘‘From the postwar period until 1979,
inequality in this country was going
down,’’ Ms. Hargreaves, a former jour-
nalist, said in an interview at a restau-
rant near her tiny office in South Lon-
don.
Since then, she said, it has been
spiraling upward, to the point where
chief executives of the top 100 British
companies now earn 185 times the av-
erage salary —making £4.8 million, or
$7.4 million a year —with a mix of sala-
ry, bonuses and long-term share plans.
In 1979, the executive pay ratio was 15
times the average wage, according to
High Pay Center calculations based on
five major companies.
‘‘If it continues to go up at the current
rate, we’ll be at Victorian levels in an-
other 20 years,’’ Ms. Hargreaves said.
That astonishing calculation has seized
the public’s attention and punctuated a
debate still going on in Parliament,
boardrooms and pubs across Britain.
Founded just over a year ago, the
High Pay Center has been churning out
well-documented reports that take a
look at executive recruitment, board-
room pay packages, salary ratios and
the rights of shareholders.
Two of its recommendations have
been included in a parliamentary bill
due to take effect in October: One
would give shareholders the right to a
binding vote on executive pay every
three years; another would require
companies to fix a single figure on ex-
ecutive remuneration, consolidating
the confusing mix of salary, bonuses
and shares that has complicated —
some say obfuscated — the issue.
When the British economy was
booming, exorbitant pay levels at the
top of the corporate world tended to get
overlooked. Today, as Britons struggle
with painful cuts in public budgets and
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JES AZNAR FOR THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
Shipments like this secondhand truck from China pass through Subic Bay, once one of the world’s largest navy exchanges. It is now a special economic zone in the Philippines.
The contrast between the old and the new is everywhere. A modern apartment building
was built next to a dilapidated barracks, a remnant of the area’s U.S. military days.
AtigerbeingfedattheZoobicSafari,locatedinwhatusedtobejungle.Tribesmenwho
once taught survival techniques to U.S. marines now entertain tourists on rainforest tours.
Shadow
s of an old military base
Subic, Rear Adm. Thomas Mercer said
when the base closed.
‘‘Subic Bay was the service station
and supermarket of the fleet,’’ said Ger-
aldAnderson, a retired naval officer and
the author of several books on the area.
Today, the Freepor t features l ive ly
commercial areas and tourist attractions,
but it is also studded with evidence of
failed investments and the ruins of a de-
caying military base. New or renovated
buildings stand beside an abandoned
casino and the foundations of a never-
completed South Korean skyscraper.
The U.S. Navy left behind more than
1,800 centrally air-conditioned houses in
neighborhoods designed to resemble
American suburbs. Some sit empty,
while others have been converted into
tourist accommodations. Yet others
have been leased by the Subic Bay Met-
ropolitan Authority, the government
agency that oversees the Freeport, as
private residences with the pitch that
Subic offers an American lifestyle in the
middle of the Philippines.
ArecentdrivedownEasyStreetin
one of the former U.S. Navy housing
areas found people living a semblance
of the American dream. In front of one
house was a monster truck with a cus-
tom paint job that looked ready for an
American car show. Speedboats and
water scooters sat in driveways with
children’s bikes in the yards. The com-
munity has a school, a public swimming
pool and ample playgrounds.
Just down the road, at the Royal de-
partment store, a Filipino family lined
up at the cashierwith two cases of Spam,
stacks of American breakfast cereals
and boxes of Cheez-Its. The children lob-
bied their parents for American candy
bars on display near the cash register.
The scene was probably not much dif-
ferent in 1967, when about 4.2 million
military personnel and their depend-
ents purchased more than $25 million in
goods at the same location. At that time,
it was one of the largest navy exchanges
in the world.
Perhaps nowhere is the contrast be-
tween the old and new more vivid than
along the polluted river that divides the
Freeport from the city of Olongapo. The
Olongapo River, given a derogatory
nickname inspired by the sewage it
held, was once the boundary between
the well-appointed U.S. Navy base and
the poverty of the Philippines.
Leaders Meeting. In honor of the event,
18 luxury villaswere built—one for each
head of state visiting the new Freeport.
These days, the villas lie in disrepair.
The tennis court is clogged with weeds,
and the water in the swimming pool has
an off-putting green tint.
Farther inside the former base is the
once heavily guarded naval magazine
area, which was once home to an esti-
mated 50,000 tons of ordnance. The mu-
nitions were stored in more than a hun-
dred bunkers, now abandoned or,
SUBIC BAY, PHILIPPINES
Philippine port, filled
once with U.S. sailors,
turns into tourist spot
BY FLOYDWHALEY
Abraham Parungao watched hopefully
as three American sailors walked
through his souvenir shop full of T-
shirts, decorative beer mugs and plac-
ardswith cheeky slogans. After haggling
for a while over a $5 wood carving, the
young men left without buying a thing.
‘‘Before, the Americans had so much
money,’’ said Mr. Parungao, 64, in his
small stall in front of where the U.S. sub-
marine tender Emory S. Land was tied
up for a visit. ‘‘These new American
sailors are cheap.’’
The thousands of big-spending sailors
have been gone for more than two de-
cades — since the United States turned
over the Subic Bay Naval Station to the
Philippines in 1992 — but the sprawling
former military base still receives regu-
lar visits fromU.S. Navy ships.
Today, the Subic Bay Freeport is a
special economic zone established to at-
tract job-generating investors with low
taxes, duty-free import privileges and
streamlined procedures. It has also be-
come a popular tourist destination for
Filipinos seeking to enjoy the jungles,
the beaches and the American legacy of
the former military base.
In line with the Obama administra-
tion’s greater focus on the Asia-Pacific
region, Subic is once again a popular port
of call for the U.S. Navy. A subsidiary of a
major U.S. defense company is bidding
on ship repair and logistical support con-
tracts, and the Philippine Department of
National Defense has reserved large
portions of the former base for future use
by the Philippine military and its allies,
principally the United States.
U.S. Navy ships can often be seen in
Subic these days, but the seaport that
millions of U.S. servicemembers passed
through will probably never be the cen-
ter of U.S. power in Asia that it once
was.
The 678-square-kilometer, or 262-
square-mile, base — about the size of
Singapore — played a role in every ma-
jor U.S. military engagement between
1898 and 1992. In October 1968, at the
height of the Vietnam War, it took in 47
U.S. Navy ships in a single day. During
the 1991 Gulf war, 70 percent of U.S. nav-
al supplies in that conflict came from
in
rare instances, repurposed.
In the cool dark confines of one of
these former bunkers, now a restaurant
known as Bunker Bob’s and run by a
former U.S. Navy officer, tourists from a
nearby beach area were dining at tables
adorned with camouflage-patterned lin-
ens. On the menu were pizza and Mexic-
an dishes. Historic maps of Subic and
World War II-era posters lined the walls.
There is little consensus, among the
thousands of retired U.S. military per-
sonnel and Filipinos who live around
Subic, as to whether the conversion of
the base into a commercial zone can be
considered a success.
About 90,000 people work in the Free-
port, according to government data.
That is nearly double the 46,000 Filipi-
nos employed by all U.S. military bases
in the Philippines in 1987, when the
bases were in full operation, according
to Mr. Anderson, the historian.
But the Freeport has also experi-
enced problems. The Subic Bay Metro-
politan Authority has reported losses of
about 7 billion pesos, or $175 million,
from its creation in 1992 through 2011.
The area has also been investigated re-
peatedly by Philippine legislators, and
criticized by President Benigno S.
Aquino III, in connection with large-
scale smuggling of oil, vehicles, rice and
other commodities.
In addition, many of the jobs in Subic
today are low-paying service-sector po-
sitions. The jobs created by the U.S.
Navy offered high pay, generous bene-
fits and valuable technical training, ac-
cording to former base employees.
Perlita Felicitas, 58, a resident of
Olongapo, said that her father had
worked formore than a decade in theU.S.
Navy’s Ship Repair Facility. Employees
in the current shipbuilding and ship re-
pair operations in Subic, she said, make a
fraction of what her father earned.
‘‘We were four children and all of us
were able to go to college because of the
U.S. Navy,’’ she said. ‘‘We were sad
when they left. There are no opportuni-
ties like that anymore.’’
New or renovated buildings
stand beside an abandoned
casino and the foundations of
a never-completed skyscraper.
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Swiss quotas highlight immigration debate
‘‘Since 2000 the population of Switzerland has increased at least 10%. Sure,
there are economic benefits, but there are significant costs to consider as well
…Massiveimmigrationinflowsresultinupheavalthatchangesthefaceof
society, often to the detriment of things the Swiss cherish.’’
HELVETICO, SWITZERLAND
ihtrendezvous.com
During a recent visit, a Filipino couple
was discussing in hushed tones which
type of Swiss chocolate to buy from the
newMarks & Spencer outlet in the high-
end shopping mall that now hugs the
Freeport side of the river.
Adrivedeeperintotheformerbase
leads to the outskirts of a 4,000-hectare,
or 10,000-acre, jungle preserved by the
U.S. Navy, and now by the Subic Bay
Metropolitan Authority, that is one of
the last virgin forests on Luzon Island.
During the 1980s, George Soper under-
went survival training in the dense rain
forest. He and other U.S. marines were
paired with local tribesmen who taught
them how to find clean water, food and
medicine in the forbidding environment.
‘‘Nowhere else in the world did you have
aU.S.militarybasewithaccesstoa
jungle like this,’’ Mr. Soper said.
Today, those same tribesmen teach
jungle survival tips to tourists, usually
in staged demonstrations that include
slapstick comedy routines.
Just past the former jungle training
area lies what had been the Cubi Point
Naval Air Station, an airstrip that could
handle some of the largest military air-
craft in the U.S. arsenal. Now ambi-
tiously redesignated the Subic Bay In-
ternational Airport, it is largely
languishing in disuse. During a recent
visit, the only aircraft using the airport
was a cargo plane delivering dolphins to
anearbyoceanpark.
Next to the airport are symbols of the
once-high hopes for Subic’s transforma-
tion into a booming commercial area. In
1996, Subic hosted the Fourth Asia Pa-
cific Economic Cooperation Economic
IN OUR PAGES
✴
100, 75, 50 YEARS AGO
1913 Escape From a Falling House
PARIS
Unusual, almost unique, the col-
lapse of the house in the rue d’Anjou,
Paris, on Friday evening [April 25] has
naturally aroused widespread comment
in the city. Much sympathy has been ex-
pressed for the relatives of M. andMme.
Emile Froment-Meurice, who perished
in the catastrophe. They were dining
quietly at home with their grandson
when the whole side of the house fell
away, burying them beneath the ruins.
Their grandson, M. François Froment-
Meurice, escaped miraculously.
1938 Film on Childbirth Approved
WASHINGTON
After canceling her plan to
show the motion picture, ‘‘The Birth of a
Baby,’’ in theWhite House, Mrs.
Roosevelt today [April 26] attended a
private showing of the filmand after-
ward called it excellent. Nation-wide con-
troversy over the merits of the picture
broke out three weeks ago when stills
from it appeared in ‘‘Life’’ and caused
the banning of the magazine inmany cit-
ies. The First Lady stepped right into the
dispute a week later by announcing that
she would have a private projection of
the picture in theWhite House.
1963 Rulings Fail to Stop Censors
NEWYORK
American crusaders for free-
dom of literary and artistic expression
are up in arms against what they fear is
a rising tide of puritanism. While in re-
cent years courts have handed down
opinions considered reassuringly liber-
al, the crusaders say that self-appointed
censors are springing up to circumvent
court rulings and intimidate authors,
publishers and distributors of works
ranging from ‘‘girlie magazines’’ to
HenryMiller’s ‘‘Tropic of Cancer.’’
Area of detail
PHILIPPINES
MALAYSIA
PHILIPPINES
INDONESIA
South
China Sea
LUZON I.
Philippine
Sea
SUBIC BAY
FREEPORT
Manila
MINDORO I.
100 km
.
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 27-28, 2013
|
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THE GLOBAL EDITION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
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SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 27-28, 2013
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
World N
ews
asia africa
BRIEFLY
Asia
U.N. agrees
to establish
military unit
for Mali
UNITED NATIONS
YANGON, MYANMAR
7hurtaspolicecrackdown
on copper-mine protest
Seven people have been hurt and three
others arrested in a crackdown by the
police in northwesternMyanmar on
residents opposed to a controversial
Chinese-backed copper mine project,
activists said.
The activists said the violence broke
out Thursday near the Letpadaung
mine as farmers plowed their land,
which had been seized for the project.
Farmers had returned to their fields in
Hsede village on Tuesday, and about
100 riot police officers and 50 soldiers
tried to drive them away two days later,
said Tha Gyi, an environmental activ-
ist.
The Letpadaung mine drew interna-
tional attention in November when the
police dispersed protesters with smoke
bombs containing white phosphorous.
The bombs caused severe burns to pro-
testers, mostly Buddhists monks, who
had occupied the site for days. Resi-
dents opposed to the project say it will
cause major environmental, social and
health problems.
(AP)
MANILA
Gunmen kill 10 backers
of Philippine town mayor
Gunmen ambushed the supporters of a
southern Philippine town mayor,
killing his daughter and nine other
backers and relatives, the police said
Friday. The mayor and eight others
were wounded.
Mayor Abdul Manamparan of
Nunungan and his supporters were rid-
ing on a truck when they were am-
bushed late Thursday on a remote road
as they headed back to the town center
after a campaign rally, said Gerardo
Rosales, police chief of Lanao del Norte
Province. About 15 unidentified gun-
men carried out the attack, Mr. Rosales
said. Police investigators suspect the
gunmen belonged to a rival clan.
(AP)
NEWDELHI
Hospital partially collapses,
trapping at least 20 patients
AportionofapublichospitalinBhopal,
India, collapsed Friday, trapping at
least 20 patients and seriously injuring
at least four others, according to the In-
dian authorities.
Kasturba Gandhi Hospital, a two-sto-
ry structure, was evacuated after the
collapse. Vijay Kumar, a hospital clerk,
said by telephone that construction
crews had been making repairs for the
past month, although they were not at
work Friday. The wing of the hospital
that collapsed had 18 to 20 patients, of
whom five or six had already been res-
cued, Mr. Kumar said.
BEIJING
Thousands punished in effort
to stop illegal lending
The Chinese authorities have sen-
tenced more than 1,400 people to prison
terms of at least five years for their in-
volvement in underground lending as
part of a crackdown on a financing
practice widely used by Chinese entre-
preneurs, a police official said Friday.
The 1,449 people imprisoned were
among the 4,170 people convicted since
2011 of violating rules on loans outside
the state-run banking system, said Du
Jinfu, a Public SecurityMinistry official
in charge of a task force on underground
lending. He said the rest of those con-
victed received lesser penalties.
(AP)
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN
Scores die as bus slams
into abandoned oil tanker
A bus collided Friday with the wreck-
age of a truck that had been attacked
by Taliban insurgents in southern Af-
ghanistan, killing 45 people in a fiery
crash.
The battered oil tanker had been left
for several days in the middle of a nar-
row road near the border of Kandahar
and Helmand Provinces after the insur-
gents’s attack. The police considered
the area too dangerous to enter, offi-
cials said. Before sunrise Friday, the
bus smashed into the truck and burst
into flames, said Abdul Razaq, the pro-
vincial police chief of Kandahar.
(AP)
Unanimous vote backs
force that builds on
French intervention
BY NEIL MACFARQUHAR
Despite qualms about embroiling U.N.
troops in the global fight against Islamist
extremists, theU.N. SecurityCouncil has
voted to establish a force for Mali, where
militants controlled much of the north
until France intervened in January.
TheU.N. force, to be composedof 11,200
soldiers and 1,440 police officers, is due to
deploy July 1 to stabilize the nation, on
the condition that the fight between the
French-led troops, who are supporting
the Malian government, and the retreat-
ing militants remains low-key.
‘‘We know it is going to be a fairly vol-
atile environment,’’ said Hervé Lad-
sous, the head of peacekeeping for the
United Nations, after the unanimous 15-
to-0 vote onThursday in the council. The
resolution specifies that French troops,
which deployed in January to push the
Islamist militants out of the north, will
intervene again should the U.N. forces
face an ‘‘imminent and serious threat.’’
Russia expressed concerns that the
blue helmets, as the U.N. soldiers are
known because of their distinctive
headgear, are moving away from their
traditional role of monitoring cease-
fires to more aggressive tasks.
‘‘We are especially alarmed by the
growing shift towards the force aspects
of U.N. peacekeeping,’’ Vitaly I. Chur-
kin, the Russian envoy, told the council,
referring to a rapid-reaction force that
has already been approved to go on the
offensive in the Democratic Republic of
Congo.
Involving U.N. troops in a civil war
would have ‘‘unpredictable and unclear
consequences’’ for the safety of all U.N.
personnel, he said.
The mandate for the force, called the
Multidimensional Integrated Stabiliza-
tion Mission in Mali, or Minusma, says
it will be deployed to help establish sta-
bility and, along with a European train-
ing mission, to resurrect the Malian
armed forces. That would allow a polit-
ical dialogue between various factions
to proceed and the government in Ba-
mako, the capital, to re-establish its au-
thority throughout the country.
The north has long been home to a
Tuareg separatist movement . But Is-
lamist militants, fueled by men and ma-
tériel flowing into Mali from Libya after
the government of Col. Muammar el-
Qaddafi collapsed, capturedmuch of the
north early last year. A military coup in
Bamako compounded Mali’s problems,
toppling a democracy and creating
chaos the militants could exploit.
The separatists made a bold push in
January toward Bamako, but the
French military intervention drove
them out of the main cities and into re-
treat in the desert. ‘‘Small cells of armed
terrorists and rebels continue to repre-
sent a threat to stability,’’ Tiéman
Coulibaly, the foreign minister of Mali,
told the council Thursday. Mali’s re-
quests for foreign intervention in recent
months have won over governments
skeptical about sending forces.
Security Council Resolution 2100,
which authorizes the U.N. force, makes it
clear that the main goals of the force are
to aid the return to civilian rule — presi-
dential and legislative elections are
scheduled for July — and to bolster the
efforts of a dialogue and reconciliation
commission. The commission ismeant to
address Tuareg grievances, among oth-
er issues. It conditions participation in
such talks on the rebels’ disarmament.
‘‘They are not going to chase the ter-
rorists in their strongholds,’’ saidGérard
Araud, the envoy fromFrance, which or-
chestrated the new force. ‘‘They are
there to stabilize the country.’’
Of course, if the U.N. troops uncover a
terrorist cell in a place where they are
deployed, like the famed Saharan city of
Timbuktu, they will dismantle it, he said.
The West African political alliance
Ecowas has already deployed about
6,000 troops inMali, and they, along with
1,000 French soldiers expected to re-
main, will form the core of the new force.
KEVIN FRAYER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rescue workers beside the collapsed garment factory building in Bangladesh. Officials refrained from using heavy machinery to clear debris because of fears of a further collapse.
Questions about building collapse mount
BANGLADESH, FROMPAGE 1
used unapproved or unsafe factories.
Two weeks ago, Wal -Mart pledged $1 .8
million to establish a health and safety
institute in Bangladesh to train 2,000
factory managers about fire safety.
On Thursday, the Bangladeshi author-
ities opened an investigation into the col-
lapse, while the police brought negli-
gence charges against the building’s
owner, Sohel Rana, his father and the
owners of four factories in the building.
The Bangladeshi High Court also issued
asummonsforMr.Rana,whoisinvolved
in local politics for the country’s govern-
ing party, the Awami League. He has
been ordered to appear in court Tuesday.
The immediate question was why the
garment factories on the upper floors of
the building in Savar, outsideDhaka, the
capital, were operating when the struc-
ture collapsed Wednesday morning. In-
dustry leaders continued to point to Mr.
Rana and what they said had been his
false assertions that the structure was
safe. ‘‘Based on that, they ran the facto-
ries yesterday,’’ Mohammad Atiqul Is-
lam, the president of the Bangladesh
Garment Manufacturers and Exporters
Association, said by telephone. He said
his staff had told factory owners Tues-
day to stay closed until the building had
been inspected. ‘‘We had very clearly
told the owners not to open.’’
But analysts said that, based on past
experience, there was likely to be plenty
of blame to go around, with harried fac-
tory owners scrambling to fill orders un-
der tight deadlines imposed by their
Western customers.
‘‘Even in a situation of grave threat,
when they saw cracks in the walls, fac-
tory managers thought it was too risky
not to work because of the pressure on
them from U.S. and European retailers
to deliver their goods on time,’’ said
Dara O’Rourke, an expert on workplace
monitoring at the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley. He added that the prices
Western companies pay ‘‘are so low
that they are at the root of why these
factories are cutting corners on fire
safety and building safety.’’
Numerous Western apparel compa-
nies issued statements acknowledging
that they had used factories in the build-
ing and voicing their condolences.
Primark, a British retailer, confirmed
that it had been using a factory on the
building’s second floor and said it was
‘‘shocked and deeply saddened by this
appalling incident.’’ Primark said it had
killed hundreds of garment workers in
Bangladesh in the past decade. At the
same time, many factory buildings are
substandard and unsafe. Bangladeshi
fire officials say the upper floors of Rana
Plaza were illegally constructed.
On Tuesday, the day before the col-
lapse, news began spreading about
cracks in the building. A local television
journalist, Nazmul Huda, said that he
had rushed to the scene but that local
men employed by the building’s owner
had prevented him from entering the
building and filming the damage.
Mr. Huda said that local police of-
ficers had also arrived at the building
but that they had not appeared con-
cerned and instead warned him not to
run a story. (He said his station, ETV,
had done so anyway.) He said a local po-
lice supervisor later reassured him that
an engineer had inspected the cracks
and had found no problems.
‘‘Local police and the local adminis-
tration did not give importance to this
problem,’’ Mr. Huda said. ‘‘They could
have locked the building.’’
Abdus Salam, the director general of
the Industrial Police, a special law en-
forcement agency that oversees gar-
ment factories, said his district com-
mander had also received a complaint
about the building Tuesday and had
rushed to the scene.
‘‘Peoplewere rushing out,’’Mr. Salam
said in a telephone interview. ‘‘They
saw the cracks in the walls.’’
He said his district commander had
asked the factory owner to close the
building until an inspection was
conducted. But when two of his officers
returned Wednesday morning, Mr.
Salam said, the factories were operat-
ing. He said the two officers had entered
the building to investigate and were still
missing after the accident.
At the scene, thousands of people
gathered around the collapsed building,
as family members of missing workers
volunteered in the search. Rescue
teams continued the search Friday,
though officials refrained from using
heavy machinery to clear debris. Reu-
ters reported that 72 survivors had been
found since daybreak, in addition to 41
found overnight. The death toll had ris-
en to 304, Reuters said, citing an army
spokesperson.
‘‘If we use heavy equipment, the
building might collapse again,’’ said
Brig. Gen. Ali Ahmed Khan, head of the
National Fire Service. ‘‘The rest of the
survivingworkersmight die if the build-
ing collapses further.’’
The government of Bangladesh de-
clared Thursday a national day of
mourning, but outrage spilled onto the
streets. Hundreds surrounded an indus-
trial building in the heart of Dhaka and
tossed bricks at the windows, demand-
ing that work be stopped. Thousands of
garment workers also staged protests
in industrial districts ringing the capit-
al.
Worker protests continued Friday,
growing angrier and more violent, as
the Bangladeshi media reported that
two factories had been torched by gar-
ment workers.
Bangladesh is the world’s second-
leading exporter of apparel, after China,
and the domestic garment industry de-
pends on a low wage formula in which
the minimum wage is the equivalent of
about $37 a month. Labor unions are al-
most nonexistent in the industry; one
labor organizer, Aminul Islam, was bru-
tally killed last year in a case that re-
mains unsolved.
Steven Greenhouse reported fromNew
York, and Jim Yardley fromNewDelhi.
‘‘People were rushing out . They
saw the cracks in the walls.’’
been engaged for several yearswith non-
governmental organizations and ‘‘other
retailers to review the Bangladeshi in-
dustry’s approach to factory standards.’’
Loblaw, a Canadian retailer that mar-
kets the apparel brand Joe Fresh, said
one factory had produced ‘‘a small num-
ber’’ of Joe Fresh garments. ‘‘We are
extremely saddened’’ by the building
collapse, Loblaw said in a statement,
adding that ‘‘we will be working with
our vendor to understand how we may
be able to assist them during this time.’’
But a fewWestern companies, includ-
ing Benetton, denied having had gar-
ments made there, even though docu-
ments were found linking those
companies to factories in Rana Plaza.
Worker advocates said it was possible
that subcontractors had been using the
factories without the companies’ knowl-
edge.
What was increasingly clear Friday
was that the collapse should not have
been a surprise. Factory fires have
Cooperation
between Koreas takes another hit
SEOUL
brought about by joint South Korean-
U.S. military drills. It also blocked South
Korean managers or supplies from en-
tering the economic zone.
But 175 South Korean managers re-
mained in Kaesong in the event of its re-
opening.
Seoul’s decision to bring them home
reflected President ParkGeun-hye’s de-
termination not to succumb to what she
called North Korea’s tactic of using pro-
vocations to extract concessions. On
Friday, she told her cabinet ministers
that she had no intention of ‘‘waiting
forever’’ for North Korea to change its
mind over the factory complex.
On Thursday, SouthKorea blamed the
North for blocking food and medical
supplies from entering Kaesong, and
warned that those who were still in
Kaesong would not be able to remain
much longer. It warned that if North Ko-
rea did not accept its proposal for dia-
logue by Friday, it would take a ‘‘grave
measure’’ regarding the complex.
On Friday, the North Korean National
Defense Commission, the country’s
highest governing agency, called the
South’s proposal a ‘‘trick’’ not worth
considering.
‘‘If they areworried about the safety of
their personnel in Kaesong, why don’t
they just withdraw them all to the
South?’’ the commission asked in a
statement carried by the North’s state-
run Korean Central News Agency. ‘‘Our
related agencies will provide all neces-
sary humanitarianmeasures concerning
their evacuation, including their safety.’’
It added, ‘‘If the South’s puppet clique
further aggravates the situation, it may
bewewhowill first take a final, decisive,
grave measure.’’
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the Uni-
versity of North Korean Studies in
Seoul, said that North Korea was likely
to expel any remaining South Korean
workers and confiscate all the assets of
South Korean factories in Kaesong — a
step Mr. Ryoo, the unification minister,
warned against on Friday, reminding
2000 and has been held up as a test case
for how the reunification of the two Ko-
reasmight work. SouthKorean factories
hired North Korean workers, allowing
theNorth’s Communist authorities their
first taste of South Korean capitalism.
Nearly 820,000 people and half a million
cars from the South have crossed the
sealed border to travel there since 2005.
South Korea’s ‘‘Sunshine Policy’’ of
encouraging economic cooperationwith
the North in order to ease military ten-
sions on the divided Korean Peninsula
was suspended when conservatives
took power in Seoul in 2008.
Some conservatives have argued that
the complex has extended a lifeline to
the North Korean regime. Last year, the
123 South Korean factories in Kaesong
produced $470 million worth of textiles
and other labor-intensive products.
They also provided the North with $90
million a year in wages for the workers.
Still, the Kaesong complex was pre-
served even when South Korea cut off
all trade ties with the North following
the sinking of a SouthKoreanwarship in
2010, which killed 46 sailors. South Ko-
rea blamed the sinking on a North
Korean torpedo attack, but the North
has denied responsibility.
North Korea has said its decision to
suspend operations at Kaesongwas also
aresponsetoinsultsbySouthKorean
media analysts who suggested that
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un,
would not close the complex because he
did not want to lose an important source
of badly needed hard currency. The
North demanded that the South apolo-
gize for disparaging its leader.
Seoul tells managers
at jointly run industrial
park to return home
BY CHOE SANG-HUN
South Korea said Friday that it was
pulling all of its 175 remaining factory
managers froma jointly operated indus-
trial park in North Korea, escalating a
standoff over the only remaining sym-
bol of economic cooperation between
the two Koreas.
The decision came hours after North
Korea had rejected South Korea’s pro-
posal for talks on the future of the site,
the Kaesong Industrial Complex, and
told the South that it was free to with-
draw its people.
‘‘To protect our citizens, we have
made an inevitable decision to bring all
of them home,’’ Unification Minister
Ryoo Kihl-jae, South Korea’s point man
on the North, said in a nationally tele-
vised statement.
So far, neither North nor South Korea
has said publicly that it wants to shut the
complex permanently. But their tit-for-
tat moves deepened doubts that the fac-
tory complex, in the North Korean bor-
der town of Kaesong and once billed as
an experiment for Korean reunification,
would resume operations any time soon.
Its operations had already been sus-
pended since April 9, when North Korea
removed all of its 53,000 workers, citing
adangerofwarthatitsaidhadbeen
Religious Services
JUNGYEON-JE/AFP
Abarricadeatamilitarycheckpointonthe
road to the Kaesong complex on Friday.
Paris and
Suburbs
Association
of Int'l Churches
To place
an ad
the North of inter-Korean agreements
on protecting investments in Kaesong.
North Korea seized South Korean
properties in a joint tourismresort on its
Diamond Mountain when South Korea
stopped sending tourists there in 2008.
The South suspended tours to themoun-
tain resort after North Korean soldiers
shot and killed a 53-year-old female
South Korean tourist who had strayed
out of the tourist zone.
South Korea spent nearly $1 billion to
build the Kaesong complex, which was
begun under an agreement reached in
Zurich
SAINT JOSEPH'S
English speaking
Catholic Church Mon-Fri. Masses
8:30am Sat. 11am & 6:30pm
(Vigil), Sunday Masses 9:30, 11,
12:30 & 6:30pm. 50 ave Hoche,
Paris 8th. Tel 01 42 27 28 56
Metro Charles de Gaulle - Etoile.
www.stjoeparis.org
ENGLISH SPEAKING
Catholic
Mission Zurich Minervastrasse 69
(see website for directions)
Tel. 044 382 02 06
Website: www. englishmission.ch
Mass times:
Saturday 6pm (Crypt)
and Sunday 11.15am (Church)
Please contact
Vanessa Boyle on
+33 1 41 43 92 06
or email
vboyle@nytimesglobal.com
AMERICAN CHURCH IN PARIS
Worship 9:00 am & 11:00 am.
Contemporary Service at 1:30 pm
65 quai d'Orsay. Paris 7th, Bus 63,
Metro Alma-Marceau or Invalides.
Tel 01 40 62 05 00. www.acparis.org
..
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 27-28, 2013
|
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THE GLOBAL EDITION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
middle east europe
world news
Iraqi leade
r warns of sectarian civil war
England clamps down
on ‘libel tou
rists’
BAGHDAD
Prime minister urges
dialogue but also vows to
get tough with insurgents
proof rests with the defendant, or the
person being sued, rather than the
plaintiff. But it strengthens a defen-
dant’s position in a number of ways,
making it harder for aggrieved parties
to sue and easier for people being sued
to defend themselves.
For instance, individuals who sue will
now have to prove that the speech at is-
sue has caused, or is likely to cause, se-
rious harm to their reputations. Corpo-
rations and other entities that sue will
have to prove that they have suffered, or
are likely to suffer, serious financial
loss. The law also makes it harder for
them to sue intermediaries like Internet
service providers, search engines and
hosts of Internet forums, focusing in-
stead on the individuals who made the
comments.
To bolster their cases, defendants in
libel suits will now be able to rely on a
so-called public interest defense, mak-
ing the case that they published their
statements in good faith, in what they
LONDON
New law requires proof
that courts there are the
most appropriate venue
BY TIM ARANGO
In the face of an armed rebellion by dis-
gruntled Sunni Muslims against his
Shiite-led government, Prime Minister
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has urged dialogue
to calm tensions but vowed to continue
military operations in a growing sectari-
an conflict that he warned could lead to a
civil war like the one raging in Syria.
‘‘Security forces must impose securi-
ty in Iraq, which is affected by a region
teeming with sectarianism,’’ he said in a
speech broadcast to the nation Thurs-
day afternoon. ‘‘And now we are start-
ing to see those problems come to us.’’
Mr. Maliki’s remarks came as his se-
curity forces continued to battle armed
Sunni tribesmen, some linked to an in-
surgent group led by former officials of
SaddamHussein’sBaathParty, in a fight
that began Tuesday morning when the
security forces raided a Sunni protest
camp in the northern village of Hawija,
near Kirkuk, that left at least 50 civilians
dead and more than 100 wounded. That
led to a series of revenge attacks against
the security forces, and the fighting in-
tensified Wednesday in Sulaiman Bek, a
village north of Baghdad that was sur-
rounded by army vehicles after insur-
gents took over government buildings.
The government used helicopter gun-
ships to fire at militants hiding in the vil-
lage and was said to be preparing a
broader assault on the town.
‘‘What happened in Hawija, and what
is happening today in Sulaiman Bek and
other places, is a point in which we
should stop and think because it might
lead to sectarian strife,’’ Mr. Maliki said.
‘‘Everyone would lose. Whether he is in
the north, the south, east or west of Iraq,
if the fire of sectarianism starts, every-
one’s fingers will be burned by it.’’
Meanwhile, as fighting also raged in
the northern city of Mosul, in Falluja
and in villages surrounding Baquba, the
capital of Diyala Province, there were
signs that Mr. Maliki’s military was
fracturing along sectarian lines.
Sheik Abdul Malik al-Saadi, a leading
Sunni cleric who wields enormous influ-
ence over the Iraqi Sunni population,
has urgedmembers of the Iraqi security
f
orces to abandon their posts and join
BY SARAH LYALL
London’s reputation as the libel capital
of the world, ‘‘a town called sue,’’ is
poised to end.
A new law enacted Thursday
strengthens the position of people sued
for libel here and puts an end to most
cases of so-called libel tourism, the prac-
tice by which powerful foreigners —
Russian oligarchs, Arab oil magnates
and large corporations, among others—
have brought libel cases against au-
thors, journalists, academics, scientists
and bloggers, often on the most tenuous
of connections to England.
Under the new law, claimants want-
ing to sue defendants who do not live in
Europe will have to prove that England
is the most appropriate place for the
case. That is intended to stop foreigners
from suing other foreigners in English
courts over, for instance, books or
magazines that have sold just a handful
of copies in Britain, or Web sites that
have been viewed few or even no times.
The new law applies only to England
and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ire-
land have different systems.
In one of themost notorious cases, the
U.S. academic Rachel Ehrenfeld lost a
lawsuit in the High Court in London that
had been filed by a Saudi billionaire,
Khalid bin Mahfouz, whom she accused
of funneling money to Al Qaeda in her
book ‘‘Funding Evil.’’ The book was
published in the United States and sold
just 23 copies in England, mostly
through the Internet.
After a judge ruled that she had in-
deed libeled Mr. Mahfouz, Ms. Ehren-
feld — who had declined to participate
in the case — was ordered to pay more
than $225,000.
The case caused several U.S. states
and the U.S. government to enact laws
that say, essentially, that English libel
laws are inconsistent with the U.S. con-
stitutional right to free speech and gen-
erally unenforceable in U.S. courts.
The law passed in England on Thurs-
day does not upend the basic premise of
English libel cases, that the burden of
Corporations and other
entities that sue will have to
prove that they have suffered,
or are likely to suffer, serious
financial loss.
WISSMAL-OKILI/REUTERS
Mourners in Baghdad at the funeral of an Iraqi soldier killed when the security forces raided a Sunni protest camp in the village of Hawija.
the opposition to the Shiite-led govern-
ment, saying they should do so just as
‘‘their brothers did in Syria.’’
In linking the raging civil war in Syria
to the growing unrest in Iraq, the declar-
ation is one of the surest signs yet that
the sectarian battles under way in both
countries are regarded by Sunnis as two
elements of a budding regional sectari-
an conflict. The civil war in Syria pits a
Sunni-led rebellion against a govern-
ment dominated by Alawites, an off-
shoot of Shiite Islam.
Sheik Abdul released his statement
Wednesday night from Amman, where
he lives. While he urged soldiers — he
did not specify only Sunnis — to leave
the military, he stopped short of endors-
ing an armed rebellion against the gov-
ernment by ordering deserting soldiers
to leave their weapons behind.
He told government opponents to ex-
ercise restraint ‘‘as long as the armed
forces are peaceful.’’
‘‘But if they open fire, then burn the
land beneath them and defend yourself
with courage and strength,’’ he said.
Already, a few Sunni members of the
Iraqi Army are deserting, said Najmal-
din Karim, the governor of Kirkuk, the
province that includes Hawija. The
desertions underscore the speed at
which the situation in Iraq is beginning
to resemble the early stages of the civil
war in Syria, where the government
forces turned their weapons on peaceful
Sunni-led protests, prompting deser-
tions from soldiers unwilling to kill
members of their own sect.
‘‘The Sunnis certainly don’t want to
fight,’’ Mr. Karimsaid, adding that some
members of army units based near
Kirkuk had contacted local officials,
saying they wanted to leave their posts.
‘‘They don’t want to kill their own
people.’’
One Sunni soldier, who agreed to
speak on the condition that his name not
be used, said he had paid a bribe to
avoid joining the assault on Hawija. ‘‘I
paidmoney tomy officer in the army not
to send me,’’ he said. ‘‘I have a family
and children, and I did not think that the
issue is worth dying for.’’
The continuing battles Thursday,
which left nearly 50 people dead, most of
them described by security officials as
militants, came as Western diplomats
intensified efforts to persuade Mr. Ma-
liki and his government to back away
from a military solution to the Sunni up-
rising. The urgings were met with justi-
fications for the heavy hand, partly out
of fears that the situation would other-
wise deteriorate into another Syria, ac-
cording to one Western diplomat and an
official close toMr. Maliki, both of whom
spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Another diplomat, who also agreed to
speak only on the condition of anonym-
ity, said a fierce disagreement had erup-
ted within the military command be-
tween Sunnis who opposed the military
response and Shiite officers who direct-
ed it.
Duraid Adnan and Yasir Ghazi contrib-
uted reporting fromBaghdad; and em-
ployees of The New York Times from
Nineveh, Anbar, Kirkuk and Diyala
Provinces.
believed to be the ‘‘public interest’’ —
whether or not the statements were
true. And statements are to be judged
defamatory only if they lead to actual
damage to the aggrieved party.
The old laws have had a chilling ef-
fect, with publishers, newspapers and
other purveyors of speech proving re-
luctant to risk offending anyone likely to
sue. A variety of people have been sued
for libel in recent years in cases verging
on the preposterous; some defendants
have spent hundreds of thousands of
dollars to defend themselves.
They include the science writer Si-
mon Singh, who was pursued by the
British Chiropractic Association after
writing in The Guardian that chiro-
practors promoted ‘‘bogus treat-
ments’’; a British cardiologist who was
sued by a Boston company after he crit-
icized one of its products on a U.S. med-
ical news site; and a professor at the
University of Iceland, who was sued by
an Icelandic businessman over com-
ments he had made on the university’s
Web site.
BRIEFLY
Middle East
U.S. more conf ident Syr ia
used chemica
l weapons
WASHINGTON
has long resisted the calls to arm the
Syrian rebels and has expressed deep
doubts about the wisdom of intervening
in an Arab nation so riven with sectari-
an strife, although he has also issued
pointed warnings to Syria.
In a statement last summer, Mr.
Obama did not offer a technical defini-
tion of his ‘‘red line’’ for taking action,
but said it would be invoked when ‘‘we
start seeing a whole bunch of weapons
moving around or being utilized.’’ In
Jerusalem last month, he said proof that
Syria had used such weapons would be
a ‘gamechanger ’forU.S.involve-
ment.
The Pentagon, administration offi-
cials said, has prepared the president a
menu of options that include commando
raids that would secure chemical
weapons stockpiles and strikes on Syri-
an planes from U.S. ships in the Medi-
terranean.
White House officials gave no indica-
tion of what Mr. Obama might do, ex-
cept to say that any U.S. action would be
taken in concert with its allies.
While lawmakers from both parties
swiftly declared that the president’s red
line had been breached, they differed on
what he should do about it.
‘‘The political reality is that he put
himself in that position that if the ‘red
line’ is crossed — he made it very clear
— it would change his behavior,’’ said
Senator John McCain, Republican of
Arizona. The intelligence ‘‘is a compel-
ling argument for the president to take
the measures that a lot of us have been
arguing for all along,’’ he said.
The timing of the White House disclo-
sure also suggested the pressures the
Obama administration was facing. It
came the same day that the British gov-
ernment said that it had ‘‘limited but
persuasive’’ evidence of the use of
chemical weapons and two days after
an Israeli military intelligence official
asserted that Syria had repeatedly used
chemical weapons.
In a letter to the U.N. secretary gener-
al, Ban Ki-moon, several weeks ago call-
ing for a U.N. investigation, Britain laid
out evidence of the attacks in Aleppo
and near Damascus as well as an earlier
one in Homs.
The letter, a copy of which was ob-
tained by The New York Times, report-
ed that dozens of victims had been
treated at hospitals for shortness of
breath, convulsions and dilation of the
pupils, common symptoms of exposure
to chemical warfare agents. Doctors re-
ported eye irritation and fatigue after
close exposure to the patients.
Michael R. Gordon contributed report-
ing fromWashington, Thom Shanker
fromAbu Dhabi and David E. Sanger
from Jerusalem.
But firmer evidence
still needed to warrant
action, White House says
JERUSALEM
Criticized for using chemical,
military to limit deployment
Israel is phasing out the use of white
phosphorus inmunitions, a military
technique used to create smokescreens
during the 2008-9 offensive in the Gaza
Strip that drew international criticism,
officials said Friday. The statement by
the army did not say whether Israel
also planned to review its use of
weaponized white phosphorus, which is
designed to incinerate enemy positions.
While legal when fired to mask troop
movements on battlefields, white phos-
phorus poses a fire risk. Images of its
embers and ash endangering Palestin-
ian civilians prompted Israel to rethink
its use. One army general was eventu-
ally disciplined over misuse of the mu-
nitions in Gaza.
Smokescreen artillery shells contain-
ing white phosphorus ‘‘are to be re-
moved from active duty soon’’ and re-
placed by Israeli-developed
alternatives ‘‘based completely on
gas’’ around a year from now, the army
statement said.
(REUTERS)
DEIR JAREER, WEST BANK
Israeli troops fire tear gas
at Palestinian procession
Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rub-
ber bullets to disperse about 500 Pales-
tinian villagers marching toward a
Jewish settlement outpost in the occu-
piedWest Bank on Friday.
The procession, the largest of its kind
for years, followed charges by Palestin-
ians that the Israeli settlers, whose
caravans abut village land, had attacked
them twice this week. Their march, pre-
ceded by a group of stone-throwing
youths, was repeatedly pushed back by
salvoes of Israeli tear gas.
Villagers said settlers burned about
ten cars Monday after planting an Is-
raeli flag on a derelict church on Friday
and pelting village youth with stones.
The Israeli military has said it is inves-
tigating the events leading up to the
march.
(REUTERS)
MUSCAT, OMAN
U.S. releases Iranian scientist
An Iranian scientist held by the United
States for 17 months has arrived in
Oman, state television reported Friday.
The scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, a
microchip expert at Sharif University
in Tehran, had been in custody since
December 2011 in connection with alle-
gations that he bought advanced tech-
nological equipment in violation of U.S.
sanctions on Iran.
(AP)
BY MARK LANDLER
AND ERIC SCHMITT
The White House has said that it be-
lieves the Syrian government has used
chemical weapons in its civil war, an as-
sessment that could test President
Barack Obama’s repeated warnings
that such an attack could precipitate
U.S. intervention in Syria.
The White House, in a letter to con-
gressional leaders Thursday, said the
nation’s intelligence agencies had con-
cluded ‘‘with varying degrees of confi-
dence’’ that the government of Presi-
dent Bashar al-Assad had used the
chemical agent sarin on a small scale.
But it said more conclusive evidence
was needed before Mr. Obama would
take action, referring obliquely to both
the Bush administration’s use of faulty
27 june
to
3july
preview:
26 june
‘‘Intelligence assessments
alone are not sufficient.’’
intelligence in the march to war in Iraq
and the ramifications of any decision to
enter another conflict in theMiddle East.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat
of California, who is chairwoman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, said the
agencies had actually expressed more
certainty about the use of the weapons
than the White House had indicated in
its letter. She said Thursday that they
had voiced medium to high confidence
in their assessment, which officials said
was based on the testing of soil samples
and blood drawn from people who had
been wounded.
U.S. officials said the attacks, which
occurred last month in a village near
Aleppo and on the outskirts of Damas-
cus, had not been definitively connected
to Mr. Assad. The White House said the
‘‘chain of custody’’ of the weapons was
not clear, raising questions about
whether the exposure to the weapons
had been deliberate or accidental.
‘‘Given the stakes involved, and what
we have learned fromour own recent ex-
perience, intelligence assessments alone
are not sufficient,’’ the White House said
in the letter, which was signed by its leg-
islative director, Miguel E. Rodriguez.
‘‘Only credible and corroborated facts
that provide us with some degree of cer-
tainty will guide our decision-making.’’
That meticulously legal language did
not disguise a thorny political and for-
eign policy problem for Mr. Obama: He
art
antiques
design
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