NST: Cyber corner for the blind launched at state library
By : Roy Goh
Malaysia gets a little bit more handicapped friendly. As if we could get any worse.Blind civil servant Lucia Limboi has found herself a new place to "hang out" when she's in town.
A Cyber Corner for the Blind was launched at the State Library here and Lucia plans to go there often."I have my own computer at home but I think it would be nice to come here during weekends or my free time to meet up with friends," she said.
Lucia, 45, a customer service officer with the Sabah Ports Authority, is among 20-odd members of the Sabah Society for the Blind (SSB) who are computer literate.
She was among several blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals invited to try out the facilities at the centre that was jointly set up by the library, SSB and National Council for the Blind of Malaysia (NCBM).
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Yahya Hussin launched the centre in a ceremony which was also attended by NCBM president Datuk S Kulasegaran, State Library director Wong Vui Yin and SSB president Wong On Fook.
"I discovered the internet in 2001 and it opened my mind to many new things," said Lucia who had since then struggled to own a computer, an effort she accomplished a few years ago. The internet has been her guide in finding answers, learning new things and to keep up with the times, said Lucia who is married to a blind foot reflexologist Sindan Bangkiu, 47. They have a child, Christobel, five, who has normal vision.
The Cyber Centre will feature four computers connected to the internet and it can be used for free during operating hours at the library.
Special assistants would also be on hand to help those who come to use the facility, including teaching them how to use various programmes available for blind and visually impaired people.
BBC: Charges brought in Chad child row
Eighteen people have been charged over alleged efforts to abduct more than 100 children in Chad for passage to Europe.
Charges including kidnapping were laid against nine French aid workers and journalists, seven Spanish flight crew and two Chadian nationals.
The Europeans were detained in the city of Abeche on Thursday as they prepared to fly 103 children out of the country.
The charity behind the flight protested its innocence, saying it believed the children were orphans from Darfur.
However staff from the UN children's agency Unicef say many of the children, now being kept in an orphanage in Abeche, cry at night for their parents and say they are from villages in Chad.
Earlier Chad's Interior Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir warned the aid workers from the French charity Zoe's Ark could spend several years in jail.
Slow system
The nine French detainees will face charges of attempted child abduction and fraud, he prosecutor's office said. The seven Spaniards will be charged with being accomplices to the crime, as will the two unidentified Chadian nationals.
It now looks likely the prisoners currently being held in Abeche will be transferred to jail, though whether they will be moved to the capital N'Djamena is unclear, reports the BBC's Stephanie Hancock.
Another European - a Belgian pilot - is in detention in N'Djamena, but is not reported to be facing charges at present.
Our correspondent says it could be some time before those charged appear in court to enter a plea.
She says the Chadian justice system moves notoriously slowly, but that faced with such a high-profile and sensational case the judiciary may well move more quickly than normal.
On the runway
Our correspondent was among a group of reporters taken by Chadian authorities to the airport at Abeche, a town close to the Sudanese border, and shown the private charter plane still sitting on the runway where it was abandoned three days ago.
The reporters were also taken to the orphanage where the children are being cared for by aid workers and UN staff.The majority of the children are believed to be between three and five years old, with the oldest about eight or nine, and several babies no more than one and a half, our correspondent says.
The charity insists it was trying in good faith to take endangered children abroad for medical treatment. But aid workers said they were not treating any of the children for any serious illnesses or injuries.
The reporters were also later taken to local police headquarters to see the 16 detained Europeans. They are not being held in prison cells but in a large room and are showing no signs of mistreatment, our correspondent says.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said the charity workers' actions were illegal and unacceptable, while Chad's President Idriss Deby has promised "severe punishment" for what he has described as a "kidnapping" or "child-trafficking" operation.
Spain, however, is taking steps "aimed at guaranteeing the right to the presumption of innocence," a foreign ministry source said.
The airline which supplied the plane, Barcelona-based Girjet, said its crew was "calm and waiting for the diplomatic authorities to resolve" the situation.
This is what happens when you're too trusting and a do-gooder.
BBC: Dog shoots Iowa man during hunt
A man out hunting in Iowa was shot in the leg after a hunting dog stepped on his gun, authorities said.The accident happened after James Harris, 37, put his gun on the ground to retrieve a fallen pheasant.
One of a pack of hunting dogs following behind stepped on the trigger, and up to 120 birdshot pellets hit Mr Harris in the left calf at short range.
A local official told a news agency the injury was "not life-threatening, but will give him trouble for a long time".
Alan Foster, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, told AFP it was not uncommon for hunters to be shot by their dogs.
"I hear about it a couple times a year," somewhere in the country, he said.
"They'll step on the trigger assembly and, if the gun for whatever reason wasn't on safety, it doesn't take a whole lot to trip a trigger."
Mr Harris was treated at Grinnell Regional Medical Center and later transported by helicopter to University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City, following the accident in Poweshiek County on Saturday afternoon.
An investigation into the accident is under way.
Ever think that dogs might be smarter than we suspect?
BBC: Key Aids strain 'came from Haiti'
By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News
The strain of the HIV virus which predominates in the United States and Europe has been traced back to Haiti by an international team of scientists.
The strain passed from Haiti to the US in about 1969 before spreading further, says
the team in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences. They hope knowing this could help find a cure for HIV, which can lead to Aids."HIV-1 group M subtype B" predominates in the US, Europe, large parts of South America, Australia and Japan.
Now scientists say they know where it came from.
'Single carrier'
The team examined archived blood samples from five early Aids patients - all of them Haitian immigrants to the United States - and analysed genetic sequences from another 117 Aids patients from around the world.
With this data, they recreated a family tree for the virus, which they believe shows conclusively that the strain came to the US via Haiti - probably via a single person - in around 1969.
Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona in Tucson is one of the study's authors. He says the new research suggests HIV first arrived in Haiti in the mid-1960s - probably from Africa where HIV is thought to have originated - before making its crossing into the US.
"By 1966 the virus first starts spreading in Haiti," he told the BBC.
"A few years later one variant from Haiti gives rise to what would then light the fuse and explode around the world as the Aids pandemic that we first became aware of."
Prof Worobey and his colleagues now want to trace the strain back further. His suspicion is that it probably arrived in Haiti from the Congo via Haitians who were working in Africa during those years.
He says understanding the origins of this and other strains of HIV will better enable scientists to predict how the virus may mutate in the future.
That was a hell of a carrier, man. And in 1969, too. "Summer of Love" and all that. Something in dates, maybe?
BBC: Mini pigs are big success on farm
Damn cute la. Got picture. Go see.A Devon fun farm is reaping the rewards of a nine-year breeding programme for miniature pigs.
The pigs, which are about a fifth of the size of ordinary pigs, have been a hit with visitors at Pennywell Farm.
TV celebrity Jonathan Ross bought two of the pint-sized porkers as pets at £150 each and there have even been offers from as far away as Australia.
The pocket pigs are a variant of the rare kune kune breed, which are found in New Zealand.
Chris Murray, co-owner of the farm near Buckfastleigh, began cross-breeding the pigs nine years ago and believes he has the perfect pet pig.
Off menu
He said: "Pigs are very cute when they are young, but they outgrow a home environment and can be aggressive when they get older.
"These pigs are just at home indoors or outdoors."
Some pet pigs, such as the Vietnamese pot-bellied variety, have in the past been bought for their cuteness. But they fell out of fashion when it became clear how big they grow.
The world's smallest pig is thought to be the 28in-long wild pygmy hog, an endangered species which lives in wildlife sanctuaries in Assam, India.
Mr Murray said: "They are easy to house train and have a good temperament.
"A sow would normally snap at you if you picked up one of her litter, but these are amazingly content."
Mr Murray doubts if they will be appearing on restaurant menus.
"They are too small, he said. "It would be uneconomic so it's unlikely they will be used for meat and there is already a huge amount of different pig meat available."
The Star: Keris tradition to continue
KUALA LUMPUR: Umno Youth will continue to use the keris as its symbol at the coming party general assembly and believes that with time the non-Malays will become de-sensitised to it.
Youth chief Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said there was no need for the movement to be apologetic or defensive about it.
He believed there was “nothing sensitive with carrying on” the tradition started by the movement two years ago.
“I feel it is important we continue to do it so that the issue becomes de-sensitised over time.
“We will explain our position without any fear and with time, God willing, people will understand that there is no personal, sensitive and ulterior motives for doing it,” he told reporters yesterday after chairing the Umno Youth executive council meeting.
Hishammuddin said that he would touch on the keris and explain what it means to Umno Youth and the Barisan Nasional Youth in his policy speech at the party assembly next Tuesday.
Last year, Hishammuddin had unsheathed and kissed the keris at the assembly.
This later caused uneasiness among non-Malays when one or two speakers at that Umno Youth assembly made racially slanted remarks about using the keris.
At yesterday’s press conference, Hishammuddin said that carrying a polystyrene keris, too, could become sensitive if people allowed themselves to be sensitive about it.
“I think Umno Youth is mature enough that when Gerakan Youth carried two plastic keris it doesn’t raise any concern,” he said.
At the recent Gerakan Youth assembly, a delegate had wielded and waved two keris over his head, in an apparent spoof on Hishammuddin. This had tickled delegates at the Gerakan assembly.
Hishammuddin pointed out that two Umno Youth speakers were hauled up before the disciplinary panel last year to explain their remarks, which had been broadcast live.
“Do not take the voices of one or two speakers as gospel truth,” he said, adding that the media had given too much emphasis on the speeches of these speakers and not enough on his and his deputy’s winding-up speeches, which had addressed the issue.
On whether he would ask the Umno Youth speakers to tone down their speeches this time, Hishammuddin said that it was a maturing process for the movement but it also applied to the Youth wings of the other Barisan component parties as well.
“As much as they want us to tone it down, they should also be sensitive to what is close and dear to our hearts as Umno Youth leaders. And this is our forum and we have to address our issues. But that does not mean that we will neglect issues that are close to them also,” he said.
He noted that at the end of the day, there were trust and comfort between the different races and this allowed the people to carry on together.
By STEPHEN THEN
MIRI: Three boys aged between 13 and 17 have been arrested on suspicion of having gang-raped a 12-year-old girl here.
The trio, believed to be school drop-outs, were arrested by a team of mobile unit police personnel late Sunday night.
Monday afternoon, they were placed under remand for eight days to facilitate investigations.
Miri police chief Asst Comm Abang Abdillah Abang Othman on Monday confirmed the arrest.
The girl had on Sunday night lodged a police report claiming that she had been gang-raped by these boys in a house outside the city centre.
The girl is also believed to be a school drop-out.
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