Toyota Official Says Recall May Not Fully Solve Safety Problem

By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: February 23, 2010 

 

WASHINGTON — In the first of many Congressional hearings into Toyota’s extensive recalls, a senior company executive told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday that the repairs prescribed by the company might “not totally” solve the problem of unintended sudden acceleration in its vehicles.

Since last fall, Toyota has recalled more than eight million cars worldwide, including six million in the United States, for complaints that the accelerator pedals can become stuck.

This month, dealers began repairing the pedals on cars involved in one of two recalls, using a remedy that James E. Lentz III, the president of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., previously said the company was certain would resolve the issue.

But in response to a question Tuesday by the House energy committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Mr. Lentz said that Toyota was still examining the sudden acceleration problem, including the possibility that the electronics system might be at fault — something the company had previously denied was the case.
While Toyota has found no evidence of an electronics problem at this point, Mr. Lentz said, “we continue to look for potential causes.”

“We need to be vigilant and continue to investigate all the complaints of the consumers,” Mr. Lentz said. There is the possibility “of mechanical, human or some other type of error.”

Mr. Lentz also told the committee that Toyota was installing a new brake system that can override a surging gas pedal on almost all its new vehicles and most of those already on the road.

Mr. Waxman, while criticizing Toyota’s response to the recall, told Mr. Lentz: “We need to be sure that you’re doing a full and adequate analysis of something you’ve denied, but that other witnesses have shown us is very possible.”

Another committee session on Wednesday will include questions for Akio Toyoda, the president of Toyota. A Senate committee also will examine the recalls next week.

Mr. Lentz’s disclosure came during a day that regularly turned emotional, as when Rhonda Smith, a Lexus owner whose car was involved in a sudden acceleration incident told her story. Mr. Lentz himself spoke in a choked voice when he discussed losing his brother in a car accident more than 20 years ago.

But Mr. Lentz, a marketing executive who has an M.B.A. degree, repeatedly avoided answering questions about the company’s technical issues.

During one long stretch of questioning by Representative John D. Dingell Jr., Democrat of Michigan, Mr. Lentz responded, “I don’t know” a number of times when asked for data about customer complaints.
He also emphasized frequently that the final authority for deciding actions on defects and other safety matters resided with Toyota officials in Japan.

His frequent references to Japan was a marked contrast to years of effort by Toyota to paint itself as a company that has given more decision-making power to its American employees. Toyota employees, many in colorful oxford cloth shirts with the company logo, sat behind Mr. Lentz in the packed committee room.
In the future, Mr. Lentz said, an employee from North America would participate on a new committee that the company is forming to examine quality issues. “We didn’t have that before,” Mr. Lentz said.

The transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, was also questioned by Mr. Dingell and other committee members who were critical of past decisions by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration not to vigorously pursue company recalls.

“There needs to be fundamental reform at N.H.T.S.A.,” Mr. Waxman said. “As I look at the record, it’s not a happy one. It’s not a successful one.”

Mr. LaHood, a former Republican representative from Illinois, sidestepped questions about whether his predecessors had been lax. He vowed his agency would “get into the weeds” and investigate complaints that the computerized electronic systems were involved.

Mr. LaHood said the department, which has 125 engineers to perform investigations, had found no evidence of electronic systems problems with Toyota cars and believed that floor mats and sticky pedals posed the greatest threat.

Mr. LaHood defended the work of government investigators, but he stopped short of saying that the recent recalls would solve the entire acceleration problem in Toyota cars.

“We stand ready to ensure prompt action on any additional defects that we have reason to believe are present,” Mr. LaHood said.

Witnesses who spoke before Mr. Lentz described how an electronic problem could have caused cars to surge unexpectedly.

Mrs. Smith, who paused to wipe away tears, told of the harrowing moments of Oct. 12, 2006, when her Lexus sedan sped out of control at 100 miles an hour.

Mrs. Smith told the energy committee that she furiously pushed buttons, shifted gears, and slammed on the brakes as she tried to stop the vehicle. Six miles later, she finally brought it to a halt.

Mrs. Smith told the committee that she felt that Toyota’s response to her complaint was “a farce.” She said a company technician told her he was not able to replicate the episode and suggested that it was caused by pressing on the brakes while the tires were spinning.

“Of course we were insulted, and furious, over being called liars,” Mrs. Smith said.

Later, Mr. Lentz said he was “embarrassed about what happened” to the Smiths. “We’re going to go down and get that car and see what happened,” he said.

His voice choking when he spoke of his brother’s accident, Mr. Lentz said, “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of what these families go through,” he said. He did not give the details of the accident.
Asked why Toyota had moved away from a business model that prized quality and openness, Mr. Lentz offered a simple explanation: “We lost sight of our customers.”

“We outgrew our engineering resource,” he said. “We’re suffering from that today.”

Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, a home to Nissan and a plant under construction by Volkswagen, said the goal of the committee hearing was to “make sure that mistakes of the past are not repeated and to be responsible when so much is on the line.”

Javier Hernandez contributed reporting from New York.

President Urges Focus on Common Ground

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ROBERT PEAR

Published: February 25, 2010 

 

WASHINGTON — If there was any question about how deeply divided Republicans and Democrats are about how to reshape the American health care system, consider that they spent the first few hours of President Obama’s much-anticipated health care forum on Thursday arguing over whether they were in fact deeply divided.

The forum played out with Mr. Obama serving as moderator, M.C. and chief defender of Democratic policy prescriptions. He and his fellow Democrats tried to make the case that the two parties were closer than they thought, with the implication that their bill was centrist and would be acceptable to mainstream voters. Republicans countered that the gap was vast, the bill out of touch with what the country wanted, and that Mr. Obama should throw it out and start over. “A dangerous experiment,” warned Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader.

By day’s end, it seemed clear that the all-day televised session might have driven the parties even farther apart. Republicans said there was no way they would vote for Mr. Obama’s bill, and Democrats were talking openly about pushing it through Congress on a simple majority vote using a controversial parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation.

As he wrapped up the session, Mr. Obama chided Republicans for advocating “baby steps” and rejected their call to start over, declaring Americans “don’t want us to wait.” He said that if he did not see any significant movement toward bipartisan cooperation, Democrats would push ahead on their own and leave it to voters to render their judgment.

“That’s what elections are for,” the president said.
The forum, at Blair House across the street from the White House, was in many respects an extraordinary sight — the president, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his side, engaging in a spirited and detailed policy debate with Republicans about one of the most compelling and ideologically polarizing issues facing the nation.

Mr. Obama’s mastery of the intricacies of health policy was impressive even to some Republicans.
“It was sort of his classroom,” Senator Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who delivered his party’s opening statement, said in an interview. “I was glad we did it, because the president’s megaphone is the biggest one and when he shares it with Republicans like he did, that gives us several hours to make our case, and I thought we made it well.”

The session did produce hints of potential agreement on some issues, but in each case Democrats and Republicans differed over important details.

They agreed on the need for more regulation of insurers, for example, but clashed over the question of whether the federal government should replace states as the primary regulator. They agreed that the federal government should help individuals and small businesses pool their purchasing power to buy insurance, but disagreed over whether the government should specify minimum benefits, as Democrats proposed.
Beyond the question of government intervention in the private insurance market, their most profound disagreement was over expanding coverage to the uninsured. The Democrats want to cover more than 30 million people over 10 years; Republicans said the nation could not even afford the entitlement programs, like Medicare, that already exist, much less start new ones.

Amid the debate over insurance industry regulation, cost containment, medical malpractice lawsuits and other minutiae of health policy, there were also plenty of theatrics. At one point, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, chastised Mr. Obama for allowing Democrats to run on, saying Republicans had spoken for 24 minutes while Democrats had had 52. (Republicans kept track of the dialogue; at the end of the day, they said Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes, Democrats 114 and Republicans 110.)

At another point, Mr. Obama looked wryly at Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, who addressed the president with a stack of papers in front of him. “Let me just guess,” Mr. Obama said, barely containing his smirk, “that’s the 2,400-page bill.”

But the biggest clash of the day involved Mr. Obama’s 2008 Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona. Reminding Mr. Obama that both of them had run for office “promising change in Washington,” Mr. McCain delivered a lengthy talk deriding the Democrats’ bill as being produced “behind closed doors” and stuffed with “unsavory deal-making.”

Mr. Obama finally tried to cut the senator off. “We’re not campaigning anymore,” the president said. “The election is over.”

Mr. McCain laughed and shot back: “I’m reminded of that every day.”

Later, though, Mr. Obama credited Mr. McCain with making a valid argument in a discussion over federal payments to private Medicare Advantage plans.

Mr. McCain criticized a provision of the Senate bill that would carve out special protections for people enrolled in the plans in Florida and a few other states, while people in his own state of Arizona would not benefit. The president called it a “legitimate point.”

Throughout the day, Mr. Obama skirmished with Republicans over the effects of the Democrats’ proposal on health insurance premiums. Republicans, citing a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate bill, said the average premium for individual policies would be about 10 percent to 13 percent higher in 2016 than the average premium that year under current law.

Mr. Obama countered that under the Senate bill, the federal government would establish standards for “decent insurance,” and that the better benefits might be more costly. And in any event, most people buying individual policies would qualify for federal subsidies, which would substantially lower what they pay.
One of the sharpest areas of philosophical disagreement between Mr. Obama and the Republicans emerged when Senator John Barrasso, the Wyoming Republican who is also an orthopedic surgeon, contended that Americans would make better, less costly health care choices if they had catastrophic insurance coverage that required them to pay for most services out of pocket.

Mr. Obama asked if he would prefer that members of Congress have only catastrophic coverage; the senator said he would. “That’s right, because members of Congress make $176,000 a year,” Mr. Obama replied, adding that he wondered whether Mr. Barrasso would feel the same way if he earned only $40,000.
For the president, Thursday’s session was a kind of Hail Mary pass, a last-ditch effort to keep his top legislative priority from slipping out of his grasp.

He opened the session by calling on the two parties to search for common ground and implored them to “make sure that this discussion is actually a discussion and not just us trading talking points.”
Mr. Obama said he found considerable overlap in the two parties’ ideas, and Democrats like Senator Max Baucus of Montana, a chief author of the bill, spent much of their morning trying to back up that assertion.
Sounding optimistic, Mr. Baucus said, “We are on the verge and the cusp, with not too much effort, to try to bridge a lot of gaps here.”

David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.

Why does Apolo Anton Ohno yawn before his races?

By Martin Rogers

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Seconds before the biggest moment of his career, the excitement and adrenaline were finally too much for Apolo Anton Ohno. He couldn't hold it in any longer.
He yawned.
Television viewers were stunned by the American's apparently lackadaisical approach to the race, which would determine whether he would become the Winter Olympian with the most medals in U.S. history. (He did, with a bronze.)
British Open golf champion Stewart Cink even Tweeted that Ohno's action made him yawn, too, as he watched on TV. 
Yet some sneaky investigation by Yahoo! Sports revealed there is madness behind Ohno's moribundity.
A friend of Ohno's – who asked not to be named because, er, "Apolo might not like it" – revealed that the yawning lets extra oxygen into his lungs in the seconds before bursting across the ice.
Ohno himself confirmed as much to Yahoo! Sports. "It makes me feel better," he said. "It gets the oxygen in and the nerves out."

Exercise

You know you need to work out, but youre having trouble getting up the enthusiasm. How do you find motivation to exercise when you just dont feel like getting off your butt? I ask myself this question every now and then, and I have the feeling Im not the only one.

There are a million ways to motivate yourself to exercise, actually, but these are a few that have worked for me.

• Have fun. If you hate running, dont go to the track for exercise. Find something you like. The list of different kinds of exercises are nearly endless. The only really important thing is to get your body moving and your heart rate up.
• How you feel after a workout. I always feel great after a good workout. Its a high. And I let that motivate me the next time.
• Calories burned. If you count calories (and its really one of the most effective ways to lose weight), you know that the more you exercise, the more calories you burn — and the bigger your calorie deficit.
• How youre going to look. Imagine a slimmer, fitter you. Now let that visualization drive you.
• Change it up. Even if you have a routine you enjoy, mix it up from time to time. Try entirely different exercises. You can check out a tape at the library and try yoga or kick boxing for an afternoon. This will not only keep you interested, it will break your muscles out of their routine and help produce better results.
• Get a buddy. Exercising with a friend introduces a positive kind of peer pressure. You will be more likely to go to the gym if you know someone is waiting there for you. Talking and laughing while exercising will also keep you from being bored.
• An exercise log/graph. For some reason, writing it down is extremely important. Really. Do it for a week and youll see what I mean.
• Get appropriate clothing. If you dont have the appropriate clothes for the exercise, it can be irritating, uncomfortable, frustrating, or even unsafe. If you exercise outside after dusk, be sure you have reflective clothing to prevent traffic accidents. Also be sure the clothing looks nice; if you dont like the way your clothing looks, you may feel uncomfortable, and less likely to exercise.
• Pack Ahead of Time: An iPod, athletic shoes, a towel whatever. Walking around the house trying to find stuff is a good time to lose your resolve. Put everything together in your gym bag. When you finish working out, take out things that need to be laundered and replace them immediately.
• Have a Goal. What do you want to achieve? Make it specific, make it meaningful, make it obtainable. Be sure to have short-term benchmarks along the way. Its OK to change your goals if the original plan doesnt work, but have a goal. Regularly evaluate how you are doing on your goals.
• Success stories. I find the success stories of others incredibly inspirational. If a fitness website has success stories, Ill almost always read them.
• Reward Yourself. Have a healthy reward when you reach a goal. Buy yourself that cute pair of bike shorts. Go for a weekend hiking tri. Soak in the sauna for your workout that day. Buy a new yoga video. Whatever works for you to celebrate in line with your healthy lifestyle!

Are you smarter than a four year old?

 

Which direction is the bus below moving?. Is to the left or to the right??

Can't make up your mind?

Look carefully at the picture again. 

Still don't know?

Primary school children all over the UK were shown this picture and asked the same question.

90% of them gave this answer:

"The bus is traveling to the right." 

When asked, "Why do you think the bus is traveling to the right?" 

They answered:

"Because you can't see the door to get into the bus."

How do you feel now???

I know; me too.
 

Haiti earthquake : Haiti Masajids now a refuge for Haitians - still standing

 السلام عليكم 
 
 

I think we knew there were masajid and Muslims in Haiti, but some may not   have seen this footage. Thanks to Kandil & Kadri for sending the YouTube link.  Subhanallah, it is great to witness the miracles of Allah. Indeed he makes   his signs clear to all humanity.    http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=rb9XCUMQJ6M&feature=related Also Watch the link below for all Masjids that survived other natural disasters: http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=k1ABRH6gDD4&feature=related

MSG – The Slow Poison

MSG – The Slow Poison

The food additive MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) is a slow poison. MSG hides behind 25 or more names, such as “Natural Flavouring.” MSG is even in your favourite coffee from Tim Horton’s and Starbucks coffee shops! 

I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, and so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and spent years working for the government. He made a remarkable discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called ‘The Slow Poisoning of America.’ 

In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies. No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so scientists have to create them. They make these creatures morbidly obese by injecting them with MSG when they are first born. 

The MSG triples the amount of insulin that the pancreas normally creates, causing rats (and perhaps humans) to become obese. They even have a name for the fat rodents they create: “MSG-Treated Rats.” 

When I heard this, I was bewildered, leading me to head into my kitchen to check the cupboards and the refrigerator. MSG was in everything -- the Campbell’s soup cans, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavoured potato chips, Top Ramen, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Gloria Swanson frozen prepared meals, and Kraft branded salad dressings, particularly the so-called “healthy low-fat” ones. 
The items that didn’t have MSG marked on the product labels had something called “Hydrolysed Vegetable Protein,” which is just another name for Monosodium Glutamate. 

For those of us not accustomed to all these, it was a shock to see the myriad foods we feed our children everyday that are filled with this stuff. Frighteningly MSG is hidden under many different names in order to fool those who read the ingredient lists, so that they don’t catch on. Other names to watch out for that is also MSG are “Accent,” “Ajinomoto,” “Natural Meat Tenderiser,” etc.

But it doesn’t stop there. 

When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants what menu items contained MSG. Many employees, even the managers, swore they didn’t use MSG. But when we ask for the ingredient list, which they grudgingly provided, sure enough, MSG and Hydrolysed Vegetable Protein were everywhere. 
Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, every restaurant -- even the sit-down eateries like TGIF, Chili’s, Applebee’s, and Denny’s -- use MSG in amazing abundance. KFC – formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken – seemed to be the WORST offender: MSG was in every chicken dish, salad dressing and sauce. No wonder I loved to eat that coating on the skin -- their secret spice was MSG! 

So why is MSG in so many of the foods we eat? Is it a preservative or a vitamin or an innocuous flavour enhancer? 

Not according to my friend John Erb. In his book ‘The Slow Poisoning of America,’ he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it has on the human body. 

Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers’ lobby group supporting MSG explains that the reason they add it to food is to make people eat more. 

* Sorry the article, for some odd reason, does not provide the link to the abovementioned website – KL.

A study of the elderly showed that older people eat more of the foods that it is added to. The Glutamate Association lobbying group says eating more is a benefit to the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us? 

“Betcha can’t eat [just] one,” takes on a whole new meaning where MSG is concerned! And we wonder why the nation is overweight! 
MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn’t added. 

Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive substance. Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in increasingly larger doses to the pre-packaged meals, soups, snacks and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday. 

The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. They claim it’s safe to eat in any amount. But how can they claim it’s safe when there are hundreds of scientific studies with titles like the following: 

“The monosodium glutamate (MSG) obese rat as a model for the study of exercise in obesity.” – Gobatto CA, Mello MA, Souza CT, Ribeiro IA.Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2002. 

“Adrenalectomy abolishes the food-induced hypothalamic serotonin release in both normal and monosodium glutamate-obese rats.” – Guimaraes RB, Telles MM, Coelho VB, Mori C, Nascimento CM, Ribeiro. Brain Res Bull. 2002 Aug. 

“Obesity induced by neonatal monosodium glutamate treatment in spontaneously hypertensive rats: An animal model of multiple risk factors.” – Iwase M, Yamamoto M, Iino K, Ichikawa K, Shinohara N, Yoshinari Fujishima. Hypertens Res. 1998 Mar.

“Hypothalamic lesion induced by injection of monosodium glutamate in suckling period and subsequent development of obesity.” – Tanaka K, Shimada M, Nakao K Kusunoki. Exp Neurol. 1978 Oct.

No, the date of that last study was not a typo; it was published in 1978. Both the “medical research community” and “food manufacturers” have known about the side effects of MSG for decades. 

Many more of the studies mentioned in John Erb’s book link MSG to diabetes, migraines and headaches, autism, ADHD, and even Alzheimer’s. 

So what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping this fattening and addictive MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity epidemic we now see? 

Several months ago, John Erb took his book and his concerns to one of the highest government health officials in Canada. While he was sitting in the government office, the official told him, “Sure, I know how bad MSG is. I wouldn’t touch the stuff.” But this top-level government official refuses to tell the public what he knows. 

The big media doesn’t want to tell the public either, fearing issues with their advertisers. It seems that the fallout on the fast food industry may hurt their profit margin. The food producers and restaurants have been addicting us to their products for years, and now we are paying the price for it. 
  
Our children should not be cursed with obesity caused by an addictive food additive. 

But what can I do about it? I’m just one voice! What can I do to stop the poisoning of our children, while our governments are insuring financial protection for the industry that is poisoning us? 

This message is going out to everyone I know in an attempt to tell you the truth that the corporate-owned politicians and media won’t tell you. 

The best way you can help to save yourself and your children from this drug-induced epidemic is to forward this article to everyone.  With any luck, it will circle the globe before politicians can pass the legislation protecting those who are poisoning us. 

The food industry learned a lot from the tobacco industry. Imagine if big tobacco had a bill like this in place before someone blew the whistle on nicotine? 

If you are one of the few who can still believe that MSG is good for us and you don’t believe what John Erb has to say, see for yourself. Go to the National Library of Medicine at  www.pubmed.com . Type in the words “MSG Obese” and read a few of the 115 medical studies that appear. 

We the public do not want to be rats in one giant experiment and we do not approve of food that makes us into a nation of obese, lethargic, addicted sheep, feeding the food industry’s bottom line while waiting for the heart transplant, the diabetic-induced amputation, blindness, or other obesity-induced, life-threatening disorders. 

With your help we can put an end to this poison. Do your part in sending this message out by word of mouth, email, or by distribution of this printout to your friends all over the world and stop this “Slow Poisoning of Mankind” by the packaged food industry. 
Blowing the whistle on MSG is our responsibility, so get the word out.

Kidan, Ethiopia

Kidan, Ethiopia
She has plans. But there are other plans.

How do you choose between your child's education and your family's survival? 

India has tightened rules for long-term tourist visas

Some countries have protested against the new rules


India visa move brings complaints

The new rules have not gone down well with many countries

India has tightened rules for long-term tourist visas, barring visitors from returning within two months of leaving.

Under previous rules, tourists on long-term visas had to leave the country every 180 days. Many simply paid brief visits to neighbouring countries.

Some countries have protested against the new rules, with the US saying they are being applied inconsistently.

India's move follows the arrest in the US of a man charged in connection with the 2008 Mumbai (Bombay) attacks.

David Headley, a Pakistani American, is said to have travelled to India several times last year to help identify targets for the attacks, which left more than 170 people dead.



India's new regulations effectively also make it much harder for people to use long-term tourists visas to work in the country.


Prior guidance and procedures that allowed re-entry to India after stays of up to 180 days are no longer in effect
US embassy in Delhi



The government has yet to formally announce or provide details of the new rules, but Home Minister P Chidambaram set out the case for tightening regulations on Tuesday.

"The gaps in the visa system have been exposed in a number of cases, the most notable among them being the case of David Headley. The compelling need to create a fool-proof system cannot be overstated," he said.

In a posting on its website, the US embassy in Delhi said the "new visa and registration regulations are being implemented inconsistently".

"Travellers have reported being denied re-entry after exiting India for business or family emergencies, or for tourist travel to nearby countries, even if their initial visit to India was for only a few days," the statement said.

Tourists in India
Many tourists say the two-month gap is too long

"The US mission has received confirmation that foreign passports are now stamped on exit to indicate that the bearer cannot re-enter India within two months of exit unless special permission is obtained from an Indian embassy, consulate, or high commission abroad, regardless of the validity of visa or length of stay in India."

On Tuesday, visiting British Business Secretary Lord Mandelson raised the issue with Mr Chidambaram.

"I can understand the motive for the new visa arrangements but we have to be careful not to make, create general restrictions," Lord Mandelson was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency.

"I think, for many tourists, a two-month gap is too big."

A spokeswoman at the British High Commission in Delhi said: "There is no real clarity over the details of the proposals or how they might be implemented. We understand that the Indian government is reconsidering its plans."

==================================
SOURCE:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8427798.stm
==================================

More and more Russians who got married, come back to the registry office to divorce.

More and more Russians who got married, come back to the registry office to divorce.The current ratio of marriages to divorces in Russia is 1000:800. Less number of children are born: there were 36 million children in Russia in 1989, currently we have only 26.3 million children.

The number of families with no children is increasing. Families are becoming smaller – 65 percent of parents have only one child, 28 percent – two children, only 7 percent have three and more kids.

http://www.jdoqocy. com/click- 3717043-10691735

According to sociologists, after the divorce the woman with a kid (or with no kids) has little chance of getting married again. There is no man to get marry to: mortality rate of the men of working age is extremely high. The number of women in their 30s exceeds the number of men significantly.

700,000 of Russian children have no parents to care about them, one third of these children ended up in orphanages. More than 50,000 children escape from home every year. 

The West also has many trends of the Russian family. People marry at older age, many couples do not get married, many people prefer having several marriages in the course of their lives, the birth of the first child is postponed for future, the number of kids in the family is reducing – both the West and Russia have all this.
However, different things cause family collapse in Russia: poverty, lack of social guarantees, terrible level of health care, alcoholism, problems with housing.

According to public opinion poll, if the family has decent income and one of the parents of the kids gets sick, they end up in poverty soon, and nothing can draw them out of poverty after this.

The recent survey of Levada-Center demonstrated that everybody in Russia, even wealthy people, are scared to become poor. The second child in the family indicates not only the family stability but the person’s confidence about stable future. The majority of Russians have not this confidence so far.

How the State Manufactures a Terrorist

An acclaimed writer digs into the story of Afzal Guru, who’s on death row

THE reason I had come to Kashmir was to meet Tabassum Guru, the wife of Mohammad Afzal Guru, who is on death row for his role in the attack on the Indian Parliament.

However, when I reached her in Sopore, north of Srinagar, she waved me away saying she had no desire to meet with journalists.

Mohammad Afzal Guru was the main accused in the attack on the Parliament.

While two of his co- accused, S. A. R. Geelani and Afsan Guru, had been acquitted, Afzal was sentenced to death by hanging in 2004. A fourth accused, Afsan Guru’s husband, Shaukat Hussain, was sentenced to ten years in prison. The hanging was scheduled for October 20, 2006, but it was stayed after a mercy petition was filed with the president.

In its judgment on his appeal, the Supreme Court recognized that the evidence against Afzal was only circumstantial and that legal procedures had not been followed by the police. Nevertheless, the judgment stated that the attack on the Indian Parliament had “ shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.” In response, a group of Kashmiri leaders passed a resolution that read, in part, “ We the people of Kashmir ask why the collective conscience of the Indians is not shaken by the fact that a Kashmiri has been sentenced to death without a fair trial, without a chance to represent himself?” Afzal’s family could not afford a lawyer. He was provided a courtappointed lawyer, but the lawyer never appeared. Then, a second lawyer was appointed but she didn’t take instructions from her client and agreed to admission of documents without proof.

Afzal submitted four names of senior advocates to the court but they refused to represent him too. The lawyer who was now chosen by the court stated that he did not want to appear for Afzal, and Afzal expressed a lack of confidence in the advocate.

Nevertheless, under the court’s insistence, this was the choice that both lawyer and client had to stay with.

That is why, in the Srinagar resolution mentioned above, the Kashmiri leaders asked whether it was Afzal’s fault that Indian lawyers thought that it was “ more patriotic” to allow a Kashmiri to die than to ensure that he received a fair trial.

Such questions were raised from a sense of great helplessness.

Only the naïve assume that the conflict in Kashmir is between fanatical militants and valiant soldiers. The real picture is much more complicated. In this system the conventional economic nodes no longer function, and all resource lines intersect at some level with the security- state.



There is a sense of enormous, often inescapable, dependency on those who are clearly seen as oppressors. This has bred complex schizophrenia in the society. Arundhati Roy has written, “ Kashmir is a valley awash with militants, renegades, security forces, double- crossers, informers, spooks, blackmailers, blackmailees, extortionists, spies, both Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies, human rights activists, NGOs and unimaginable amounts of unaccounted- for money and weapons.

There are not always clear lines that demarcate the boundaries between all these things and people, it’s not easy to tell who is working for whom.” It is this murky landscape that is so clearly illuminated by the night- flare that was Tabassum Guru’s statement published in Kashmir Times in October 2004.

Entitled ‘ A Wife’s Appeal for Justice it is a unique statement, anguished and unafraid. It tells the story of the way in which the police and the armed forces have turned Kashmiris into collaborators, and, although the statement is no more than 1,500 words long, it demonstrates more starkly than most documents about Kashmir the brutal cost of military occupation.

In 1990, like thousands of other Kashmiri youth, Afzal had joined the movement for liberation.

He had been studying to be a doctor, but instead went to Pakistan to receive training. He returned in three months, not having finished his training, because he was disillusioned.

Upon his return he surrendered to the Border Security Force and was given a certificate stating that he was a surrendered militant. His dream of becoming a doctor was now lost; he started a small business dealing in medical supplies and surgical instruments. The following year, in 1997, he got married. Afzal was 28, and Tabassum 18.

AFTER his surrender, Afzal wasn’t free of harassment. He was always being asked to spy on other Kashmiris who were suspected of being militants. ( This is Sartre, writing more than 50 years ago: “ The purpose of torture is not only to make a person talk, but to make him betray others. The victim must turn himself by his screams and by his submission into a lower animal, in the eyes of all and in his own eyes.”) One night, members of a counterinsurgency unit, Special Task Force or STF, took Afzal away.

He was tortured at an STF camp. Afzal was asked by his torturers to pay one lakh rupees and because there was no such money available Tabassum had to sell everything she had, including the little gold she had received on her marriage.

And, as at other points in her appeal, her own particular suffering is interpreted in the light of what other Kashmiris have experienced: “ You will think that Afzal must be involved in some militant activities and that is why the security forces were torturing him to extract information.

But you must understand the situation in Kashmir, every man, woman and child has some information on the movement even if they are not involved. By making people into informers they turn brother against brother, wife against husband and children against parents.” One of the officers mentioned in Tabassum’s appeal, Dravinder Singh, has been frank about the necessity of torture in his line of work. He has stated that torture is the only deterrent to terrorism.

In fact, Singh has told a journalist in a recorded interview about having questioned Afzal: “ I did interrogate and torture him at my camp. And we never recorded his arrest in the books anywhere. His description of torture at my camp is true.

That was the procedure those days and we did pour petrol in his arse and gave him electric shocks. But I could not break him. He did not reveal anything to me despite our hardest possible interrogation.” After his release from the camp, Afzal had needed medical treatment. Six months later, he moved to Delhi. He had decided that he would soon bring Tabassum and their little son, Ghalib, to a place he had rented. But while in Delhi, Afzal received a call from Dravinder Singh. Singh said that he needed Afzal to do a small job for him. He was to take a man named Mohammad from Kashmir to Delhi, which he did, and he accompanied the same Mohammad to a shop where he bought a used Ambassador car. T HE car was used in the attack on the Parliament, and Mohammad was identified as one of the attackers. Afzal was waiting at a bus stand in Srinagar for a bus to Sopore when he was arrested and taken to the STF headquarters and then to Delhi.

Afzal identified the slain terrorist Mohammad as someone he knew. This part of his statement was accepted by the court but not the part where he said that he had acted under direction from the STF. Tabassum wrote, “ In the High Court one human rights lawyer offered to represent Afzal and my husband accepted. But instead of defending Afzal the lawyer began by asking the court not to hang Afzal but to kill him by a lethal injection. My husband never expressed any desire to die. He has maintained that he has been entrapped by the STF.”