Moscow bans night-time vodka sales in health drive

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Moscow banned night-time sales of vodka and other spirits today, part of a nationwide drive to curb crime and disease linked with Russia’s national drink.

The ban is among a series of tough measures to reduce alcohol abuse ordered last year by President Dmitry Medvedev as part of a fight to slow Russia’s persistent population decline. He called alcoholism a “national disaster” that undermines public health and hampers the economy.

A ban on retail sales of drinks with alcohol content of more than 15 per cent between 10 pm and 10 am came into force on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Moscow City Hall’s retail department said. Bars and restaurants are not affected.

The ban, which brings Moscow into line with several other Russian regions, is aimed at curbing alcohol abuse, youth drinking and crime, the spokeswoman said.

In a drive to cut alcohol consumption and reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths, the federal authorities have tripled the excise duty on beer and introduced minimum prices for vodka.

The average Russian drinks 18 litres of pure alcohol per year, and a campaign against alcohol said earlier this year that 3,000 Russians a year die from alcohol poisoning and more than 75,000 from alcohol-related diseases.

In 1985 the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared war on the age-old Russian vice, ordering dramatic cuts in the production of wines and spirits and introducing strict controls on public consumption of alcohol.

The campaign caused a surge in the illegal production of low-quality home-brewed booze and the curbs dealt a blow to Gorbachev’s popularity.

Wednesday’s ban could increase sales of home-made “moonshine” and create an “alcoholic underground,” the head of the upper house of parliament, Sergei Mironov, said on his web site mironov.ru.

An earlier ban on night-time alcohol sales in Moscow was severely undermined by a loophole that allowed 800 stores to sell alcohol round the clock.

City Hall said there would be no exceptions this time and any outlet defying the ban can lose its licence

Russia, Singapore home to wealthiest expats

Russia, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are home to the wealthiest expats, with Eurozone countries falling behind when it comes to paying for foreign expertise, according to a survey of expats on Wednesday.

The third annual report commissioned by HSBC Bank International found finances among expats were generally positive with two-thirds, or 66 per cent, saying they have more disposable income to save and invest since moving abroad.

But the survey found expats in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Singapore enjoyed the greatest wealth overall, having higher salaries, more disposable income and more luxury items like swimming pools, properties and yachts.

Expats in Russia topped the list for the second consecutive years with a third, or 36 per cent, reporting earnings of over US$250,000 (RM782,000) a year — compared to two-thirds, or 62 per cent, of expats in Spain earning below US$60,000.

HSBC spokeswoman Lisa Wood said the survey, conducted by research company GfK, showed the wealth gap was widening between the east and west, with expats in emerging economies leaving their counterparts in the Eurozone behind.

“The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies have fared well over the last year and as a result we’ve seen that these expat locations are particularly strong when it comes to expat finances,” Wood said in a statement.

“Eurozone countries were the worst-performing when looking at purely financial criteria and subsequently all featured in the bottom quartile of our league table.”

Wood added it was not surprising that ongoing volatility in the Eurozone region was a major contributor to this and was driving expats to seek jobs in countries with higher salaries.

The Expat Economic survey, part of HSBC’s Expat Explorer Survey of 4,100 expats from 100 countries, ranked 25 countries on scores linked to annual income, monthly disposable income, and a measure of defined luxuries.

When it came to salaries, the survey found that about 13 per cent of expats globally earned US$250,000 a year or more.

Russia topped this table followed by Singapore and Bermuda with 32 per cent and 27 per cent of expats respectively earning this amount.

Mainland Europe took the lowest positions on the table.

While only one quarter, or 26 per cent, of global expats on average earn less than US$60,000, the survey found 62 percent of expats living in Spain earn below that amount, 47 percent of expats in France and the Netherlands, and 45 percent in Germany.

But Wood said this could largely be explained by the high number of expats who choose to retire in mainland Europe.

One in five expats say they are able to pay off debt while working abroad but workers in Britain and Australia are most likely to be accumulating more debt, at 11 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.

Seize moment for peace, Obama tells MidEast leaders

US President Barack Obama urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders yesterday not to let the chance for peace slip away as he opened a Washington summit shadowed by Middle East violence.

But with a fresh West Bank shooting attack and a persistent deadlock over Jewish settlements, Obama acknowledged scepticism “in some quarters” about his prospects for succeeding where so many US leaders have failed and said he was under no illusions about the challenges ahead.

Wading into peacemaking on the eve of the relaunch of face-to-face Israeli-Palestinian negotiations after a 20-month hiatus, Obama said leaders from both sides shared Washington’s conviction that a deal on Palestinian statehood could be reached within a year.

Obama said he told Abbas and Netanyahu that this chance may not repeat itself. .





“As I told each of them today, this moment of opportunity may not soon come again. They cannot afford to let it slip away,” Obama said after one-on-one talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

But the talks already faced a major stumbling block with Israel resisting any formal extension of a partial freeze on construction in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Abbas has threatened to pull out of the revived peace process if building resumes after the September 26 expiration of the moratorium.

Obama earlier condemned as “senseless slaughter” an attack on Tuesday by Islamist Palestinian group Hamas that killed four Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and vowed that “extremists and rejectionists” would not derail peace efforts.

“The message should go out to Hamas and everybody else who is taking credit for these heinous crimes that this is not going to stop us from not only ensuring a secure Israel but also securing a longer lasting peace,” Obama told reporters.

But in an attack coinciding with Obama’s inauguration of the summit, suspected Palestinian gunmen wounded two Israelis in the West Bank yesterday.

Obama was hosting Middle East leaders at a White House dinner before the formal start of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks at the State Department today.

The summit marks Obama’s riskiest plunge into peacemaking, not least because he wants to forge a deal within 12 months, a timeframe considered a long shot by most analysts.

Striking a conciliatory tone, Netanyahu called Abbas “my partner in peace” and pledged to seek an end to the conflict “once and for all,” according to excerpts of a speech he was due to deliver at the White House dinner.

But Netanyahu also underscored Israel’s demands that any final peace deal include security arrangements to ensure a future Palestinian state, which he says must be demilitarised, would not become an “Iranian-sponsored terror enclave.”

Deep distrust between the two sides is one of the biggest obstacles to Obama’s quest for a two-state solution that has eluded so many of his predecessors.

There is also the danger that failure to achieve an accord could set back Obama’s faltering attempts at winning over the Muslim world as he seeks solidarity against Iran.

Hamas militants declared war on the talks on Tuesday even before they began and warned of further attacks, underscoring the threat hard-liners pose to the fragile peace process.

The attack could make Netanyahu even less likely to accede to Palestinian demands to offer a further freeze in Jewish settlement-building on occupied land in the West Bank.

The looming expiration of Israel’s 10-month partial moratorium on new housing construction in Jewish settlements could represent an early obstacle in the peace talks.

Abbas, politically weak because he governs only in the West Bank while Hamas controls Gaza, could suffer another blow to his prestige among his people if he sticks with the talks while Israel accelerates building on land captured in a 1967 war. Obama’s aides have been scrambling for a compromise.

Netanyahu, who heads a government dominated by pro-settler parties like his own, has not given any definitive word on the issue. But his office said he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night there was no change in his cabinet’s decision to allow the freeze to lapse.

SAS plans first mile-high gay wedding

Scandinavian airline SAS is planning the world’s first same-sex wedding in the air.

SAS, which is co-owned by the governments of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, said it hopes to host the wedding aboard an Airbus A340 between Stockholm and New York on December 6.

SAS is planning to take same-sex marriages into the heavens.




To find the couple, the airline has launched a social media campaign called “Love is in the air” encouraging couples to set up a profile and compete for votes.

“Airlines, including SAS, have organised weddings onboard flights for decades, but we would be the first in the world to organize a same-sex wedding in the air,” Robin Kamark, Chief Commercial Officer, SAS, said in a statement.

“SAS is the national airline of three of the world’s most liberal and progressive countries in the world, especially when it comes to LGBT rights, so we feel this is a natural celebration of love.”

The winning couple will receive business class return flights with SAS to New York, three nights’ accommodation in New York, flights to Los Angeles, and three nights’ accommodation in West Hollywood.

SAS said it was also running a US version of the competition where one couple will win a wedding and honeymoon package to Sweden

Blasts kill 20 in Pakistan’s Lahore, 170 hurt

Three bombs exploded at a Shi’ite procession in the Pakistani city of Lahore yesterday, killing at least 20 people and wounding over 170, piling pressure on a government already overwhelmed by floods.

Police said two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd, after a lull in violence during the floods, the type of attack that Pakistani Taliban militants have claimed in the past.

Sajjad Bhutta, a senior Lahore official, told Reuters the death toll had climbed to 20, with at least 170 wounded. Rescue services said 25 were killed.

Separately, the US Justice Department said prosecutors had charged the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, for the plot that killed seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December.

A policeman removes his motorcycle from the scenes of protests in Lahore September 1, 2010




Mehsud, believed to be in the tribal areas of Pakistan, was accused of conspiracy to kill Americans overseas and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, the Justice Department said. The charges confirm Pakistan’s Taliban insurgents have extended their reach overseas.

Soon after the Lahore blasts, a mob set fire to a police station. People also beat policemen, witnesses said.

Pro-Taliban Sunni militants frequently attack Shi’ites as part of a campaign to destabilise the US-backed government.

The renewed violence came as millions of Pakistanis continued to struggle for food and water more than a month after the worst floods in the country’s history, deepening concerns over the stability of the country.

The floods have ravaged Pakistan’s economy, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said, with massive job losses and soaring inflation expected to hurt a nation whose stability is vital to the US war against militants in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“The floods have inflicted damage to the economy which may, by some estimates, reach US$43 billion (RM137.6 billion), while affecting 30 percent of all agricultural land,” Gilani said briefing the cabinet.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with cotton the main cash crop. The sector is a major source of employment.

Facing the prospect of long-term economic pain, Pakistan hopes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will soften the terms of an US$11 billion loan. Pakistani and IMF officials are meeting in Washington to work out the impact of the floods.

“This economic loss will translate into massive job losses affecting incomes of thousands of families, which may have serious social implications,” said Gilani, whose government was heavily criticised for its slow response to the catastrophe.

Pakistan’s military has taken charge of relief efforts, but Islamist charities, some linked to militant groups, have also stepped in, raising concerns they may exploit public anger.

The United States yesterday formally added Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, to its blacklist of foreign terrorist organisations subject to travel and economic sanctions.

The TTP is the main Pakistani militant alliance which operates from Pakistan’s northwest. It is suspected of being behind most bomb and suicide attacks across Pakistan.

Before the floods struck a vast swath of the country, the army said it had scored major gains against the Taliban. In renewed air strikes in the northwest, Pakistani forces killed up to 62 militants, their family members and other civilians with no ties to the fighters, officials said yesterday.

Washington has repeatedly urged Pakistan to go after militant sanctuaries in the northwest saying these have helped boost the Afghan insurgency, now at its deadliest. Pakistan says it is doing all it can to fight the militants.

Testing ties further, Pakistan’s army said yesterday it scrapped talks with US military officials after a military delegation sent to Washington had to go through “unwarranted” airport security checks.

British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said it could take Pakistan years to recover from the floods with threats from water-borne disease and opportunistic militants. “The danger always is that you get groups who have an ulterior motive who provide aid to try to curry favour,” he said after visiting an aid camp.

Mexico sacks nearly a tenth of federal police

Authorities in Mexico have fired nearly 10 per cent of the federal police force as President Felipe Calderon seeks to rein in powerful drug cartels and curb widespread corruption among Mexican police.

“Because they failed to carry out duties established in the federal police law, 3,200 policemen were fired,” Deputy Police Chief Facundo Rosas said at a press conference on Monday.

Another 465 policemen, including a police chief in the violent northern city of Ciudad Juarez who was turned in for corruption by his own staff, will also be fired.

A federal police spokesman said some of those fired had failed drug, lie detector or vision tests or had been found to have assets that could not be accounted for by superiors.

He declined to comment on whether any were suspected of police corruption, a common complaint in Mexico, where police are known to solicit bribes and even work with the very drug cartels the government is trying to fight.

Before the dismissals, there were about 34,500 federal police officers.

When Calderon took office in late 2006, he deployed more than 50,000 troops and federal police because local police forces there had failed to stop rising violence.

More than 28,000 people have died in drug violence since Calderon launched his war on drugs, prompting fears that bloodshed could undermine tourism and investment as Mexico slowly recovers from its worst recession since 1932.

Suspected drug hitmen killed the mayor of a small town in northern Mexico over the weekend in Tamaulipas state where two car bombs exploded and the bodies of 72 murdered migrant workers were found last week.

Indonesia jails businessman over bid to bribe agency

An Indonesian businessman who played a leading role in a plot to undermine the graft eradication agency in one of Asia’s most corrupt countries was sentenced today to four years in prison.

Indonesia is attracting growing interest from foreign investors, but bribery is seen as a top political risk and a factor hampering growth in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Anggodo Widjojo, the brother of a fugitive graft suspect, was caught on tape last year conspiring with senior law enforcement officials to frame two officials at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to weaken the powerful agency.

The plot followed his failed attempt to bribe the two officials to drop a graft case against his brother, Anggoro Widjojo.

The attempt to frame the two KPK officials prompted outrage among ordinary Indonesians. It illustrated the extent to which corruption pervades the legal system and the lengths to which powerful vested interests will go to avoid being held to account.

It was also seen as a test of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s commitment to reform in the face of enormous resistance from powerful figures who had prospered under the old way of doing business.

“The defendant’s acts by giving money to take care of the case against his brother have hampered corruption eradication efforts,” said one of the judges at the corruption court.

State prosecutors had sought a six-year jail term.

The Widjojo wiretaps, played in court and televised last year, sparked nationwide calls for legal reform. Two days after they were aired, Yudhoyono announced he was making judicial reform a policy priority in his second term.

The KPK is seen as one of the most effective tools in tackling graft and analysts say efforts to undermine it should be taken very seriously. Some critics are concerned that those convicted of corruption are being treated too leniently.

Kevin O’Rourke, a Jakarta-based political risk analyst, said the sentence was standard for a corruption case.

“However, the framing scandal revealed deep deficiencies in the legal system, and key personnel, that still remain unaddressed,” he told Reuters.

Pakistan’s flood victims frustrated with medical care

Victims of Pakistan’s floods queued to get medical treatment today as doctors complained of a shortage of medical supplies to treat a rising number of patients.

Monsoon floods have receded in some areas but aid agencies fear disease, food shortages and malnutrition may create new crises as people head back to their shattered towns and villages and try to rebuild their homes and lives.

“Whatever stock of medicines we have is about to finish and the number of patients will increase in the coming days,” said Ashiq Hussain Malik, medical superintendent of Muzaffargarh’s main district hospital in Punjab province.

A flood victim fills a traditional clay water container from a broken pipeline submerged in flood waters in Shikarpur, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, today, August 31, 2010.





“Nearly 60 per cent of patients are suffering from gastroenteritis, diarrhoea, skin and eye infections and the patients who are coming here are in a pretty bad condition.”

The United Nations has warned of imminent waterborne diseases, including typhoid fever, shigellosis and hepatitis A and E, and vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever.

The floods have left one-fifth of the country under water, an area the size of Italy. Some Pakistanis have grown increasingly angry with the sluggish government response, and are turning to Islamist charities, some of them tied to militant groups.

The floods have killed more than 1,600 people and left at least 6 million homeless.

Muzaffargarh hospital is treating 1,000 flood victims and that number is likely to rise. People lay on the floor or were using their own rope beds because of a lack of space.

“I came to hospital around dawn and I’m still waiting for my number,” Naseem Bibi said as her five-year-old daughter, suffering from diarrhoea, slept on the ground.

“Only those people who have acquaintances in the hospital are getting medical treatment. No one is looking after poor people like us.”

The government is faced with the daunting task of securing enough aid for relief operations, meeting the needs of people who will want compensation for destroyed homes and livestock, and blunting long-term economic pain.

“The flooding significantly raises near-term growth and inflation risks and most probably postpones any near-term opportunity for transitioning back to the country’s growth trend with manageable inflation and macroeconomic balance,” said Moody’s Investors Service.

Grenade explodes near Thai state TV channel

A grenade exploded in the compound of a Thai state-run broadcaster today but no one was injured, police said, the fourth mysterious blast in five weeks during a state of emergency in Bangkok.

The grenade damaged three vehicles inside the compound close to one of the city’s largest military bases on Viphavadi-Rangsit Road leading to the capital, said police Colonel Paisan Wongwatcharamongkol, citing witnesses.

Authorities suspect the grenade was shot from an M79 launcher positioned on an overhead highway, Paisan said.”Three vehicles were slightly damaged by sharpnel from the explosion.”

Broadcaster NBT, whose compound was hit by the grenade, has faced criticism from “red shirt” anti-government demonstrators, who accuse the channel of biased reporting.





It was the latest in a series of small grenade or bomb attacks across Bangkok since violent clashes between troops red shirt protesters in April and May, in which 91 people were killed and up to 2,000 wounded.

On August 26, a grenade tossed into the headquarters of Thai duty-free giant, King Power Group, wounded a security guard. That occurred on the same street where a bomb exploded a few weeks earlier, seriously wounding a garbage collector.

On July 25, a bomb hidden at a bus stop outside a supermarket killed one man and wounded nine.

The emergency decree, imposed on April 8 after protesters stormed parliament, gives security agencies broad powers to impose curfews, detain suspects without charge, censor media and ban political gatherings of more than five people.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has not identified when emergency rule will be lifted in Bangkok.

Broadcaster NBT was targeted for criticism in 2007 by “yellow shirt” protesters when allies of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra were in power

Bruni should die after stoning comments, says Iranian paper

An Iranian newspaper said today that Carla Bruni, the wife of France’s president, deserved to die after she expressed solidarity with a woman sentenced to be stoned for adultery.

The hardline daily Kayhan called Bruni a “prostitute” whose lifestyle meant she deserved a similar fate as the Iranian woman who was sentenced to death for adultery.

Carla Bruni was one of several French celebrities who published open letters to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, whose case has caused international outrage and highlighted Iran’s use of stoning as capital punishment.

Bruni has expressed solidarity with the Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned for adultery





The wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote: “Spill your blood, deprive your children of their mother? Why? because you have lived, because you have loved, because you are a woman, an Iranian? Every part of me refuses to accept this.”

Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reported Bruni’s letter on Saturday under the headline: “French prostitutes enter human rights uproar”.

Today it returned to the subject, criticising Bruni’s “illicit relationships with various people” and blaming her for causing Sarkozy’s divorce from his second wife.

“Studying Carla Bruni’s record clearly shows the reason why this immoral woman is backing an Iranian woman who has been condemned to death for committing adultery and being accomplice in her husband’s murder and, in fact, she herself deserves to die,” Kayhan said.

There has been no official reaction from France where the media have paid very little attention to the affair.

At his weekly news conference, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast called on Iran’s media to use more temperate language.

“Insulting the officials of other countries and using inappropriate words, this is not approved of by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said when asked about the issue.

“The policies, the manners and the comments of other countries’ officials, we criticise them, we make objections to them and we call for them to review their deeds, but we don’t think using inappropriate words and insulting words is the right thing to do.”

Ashtiani, a mother of two, has received 99 lashes for having an illicit relationship with two men. The stoning sentence has been suspended pending a judicial review but could still be carried out, an Iranian judiciary official has said.

Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran’s sharia law, enforced since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran is second only to China in the number of people it executes, according to Amnesty International.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has developed close ties with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has offered asylum to Mohammadi Ashtiani, prompting an embarrassing public rejection of his offer by Iran.