GEFONT Chairperson Mukunda Neupane has been arrested by the Royal administration today from the frontline of the protest rally organized by Seven Party coalition for the restoration of full democracy & peace. Along with him, several senior leaders of CPN-UML and NC as well as other parties of the coalition have been arrested. Activists from mass organizations and political parties in a large number exceeding more than 300 persons are arrested today on September 5, 2005.
The number of persons injured because of the violent attack of the police force is as high as 65 based on information till now. The rally broke the unconstitutional prohibition order of the autocratic government headed by the king. It is to be noted that in the ongoing movement for democracy in Nepal, more than 400 leaders and activists were arrested from the joint protest on september 4 in the heart of the capital city.
Altogether 78 persons were injured in the massive attack by the autocratic Royal administration. GEFONT by its press statement has demanded immediate release of Chairperson and other leaders & activists. The press statement has condemned the barbaric action of the autocratic Government which has violated all norms of constitution and human rights. The press statement has also challenged the government that its action will compel the entire masses of workers to flow in the streets of capital city to jam everything.
Date: September 5, 2005
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REVOLVING DOORS - Karen Wirsig, Our Times Magazine
To catch a chance at media greatness: it’s the dream that makes life easier for broadcast managers everywhere and lines the pockets of the owners. Workers will put up with a lot if they believe they need their employer more than their employer needs them. And the media is a competitive industry that seems to thrive on chewing people up and spitting them out.
People trying to break into the industry are sometimes happy to grab any chance they can get. But, in some cases, tired of the long hours, the instability, and the lack of control they have over their work, media workers are choosing to join unions. In other cases, they simply move on.
Media managers don’t seem afraid of the revolving door. In fact, they appear to welcome it as a way of ensuring a continuous supply of fresh faces to market to their audiences. But among the people pegged as hot commodities one day and old news the next are the workers with the least power and with some of the most troubling stories from the front-lines.
In her quest for full-time, secure employment in the media industry, Banzon (not her real name) is far from alone. Indeed, working in the media, both private and public, has all the same pitfalls as in any other contemporary industry, whether you’re shooting footage, reporting, editing, producing, engineering, hosting, selling ads, scheduling or accounting. With the promise of long-
term employment reserved for fewer and fewer workers, insecure contract and casual jobs are where it’s at especially, it seems, if you are a worker of colour like Banzon.
Recruiting people to be the flavour of the month while trying to maintain the utmost control over hiring and firing is the way many media outlets are operating these days. Increasingly, broadcasters are understanding that it makes sense for them to hire people of colour to reflect the audiences in Canada’s largest cities. But for the workers themselves, it can feel like a set-up.
There are no definitive statistics on who is getting jobs in the Canadian broadcast industry and who is staying. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that people of colour and women are more likely to find themselves in temporary jobs with little or no security. This is as true at Canada’s national public broadcaster, the CBC, as it is at private stations.
Toronto documentary filmmaker Min Sook Lee, who has worked in public, private, and community-based broadcasting, points out that there are two competing issues when it comes to hiring people of colour: systemic racism and the economic imperative of putting people of colour on the airwaves.
“For the past few years there has been a palpable shift in casting people of colour in front of the news camera as reporters and anchors,” says Lee. “Where the colour lines are drawn is often in the technical categories, the upper management levels, and the senior production levels. Here,
the population remains homogenous, racially. Most news camera people are men. Most senior producers of news are white. Most executive producers of news are white.
“The hiring of people of colour is the old ‘new wave’ in media, but, because media work is becoming more based on contracts, we are more often the ones with the least seniority. And I think the media industry is like any industry: people in power generally look to replicate
themselves racially, culturally, etc.”
Media workers who lack job security and seniority have less control over the content of their work. It is a situation that contributes to the tokenization of issues that affect people of colour and thus a “dumbing down” of information, says Datejie Green, a current affairs and
documentary producer and the Canadian Media Guild’s human rights and equity director.
“From my experience, the tone gets set right at the time of hiring. The exec pumps you for information on how to reach people in communities that are under-served. You are given the full impression that those new ideas and untold stories will be valued. But, in reality, those stories
are only there as a back-up. The status quo perspective remains the core of programming.
“Occasionally, as you work along trying to be creative on a daily basis, they’ll come back to you, but when they want something ‘entertaining,’ ‘cute’ or sensationalist. More often than not, they don’t allow people of colour to work on serious journalism.”
“You are left with two options,” Green says. “One is to forget who you are, go with the flow and be as much like them as possible to secure your job. The other is to stay true to yourself and stick to your knowledge and ideas that you know ring true for many communities in Canada.
But the second option is less popular and therefore it means risking your job security every hour of the
day.”
People who work behind the scenes in the media are also feeling squeezed by their employers’ fairweather commitment to a diverse workplace. Amy Paris (not her real name) works in administration for a specialty cable channel that has a practice of hiring women of colour.
Unfortunately, the fact of hiring a diverse workforce has not translated into respectful and equitable policies in the workplace. “I have seen no development in my career,” says Paris, who has worked for the station for four years. She has been passed over for training in favour of a
more recently hired colleague who looks like the managers.
“I’m really happy we are unionized,” she adds, and expresses hope that the CMG will enforce an end to favouritism and help make professional development available to everyone.
Combatting racism in the workplace is an uphill battle, even for unionized shops. Unions typically need active involvement by their members of colour to raise the issues and to garner the workplace support needed to fight for strategies that will bring about a change. Often this
means doing as much work inside the union as inside the workplace. And it’s especially not easy for workers of colour to be active in an anti-racism campaign when their jobs are tenuous. Says Green: “This is a vicious cycle that employers are counting on and benefit from.”
Broadcast employers are not shy about pushing for the casualization of their industry. Job security is one of the main issues on the table in the current round of contract talks between the CBC and its employees, who have been bargaining for more than a year. CBC management,
looking for “operational flexibility,” has been pushing for a provision in the new agreement that would allow the public broadcaster to hire virtually all new employees on contract.
Meanwhile, TV station Toronto 1 fought at the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to keep its current affairs employees out of the station’s new bargaining unit. Quebecor, the owner, argued that the working conditions of the current affairs staff don’t “lend themselves to ‘collective’ bargaining, as most features of (current affairs staff members’) employment are dictated by personal individual characteristics, from personal appearance (to) behaviour and popularity, as well as their creativity.”
Read: “We want to be able to get rid of people when we want, and we certainly don’t want to be on the hook for finding them other work if we decide to change our programming.”
“I don’t think experience counts for that much in the world of TV today,” says Carmel Smyth, who helped organize Toronto 1 for the CMG this year. The guild applied in April to represent more than 80 technicians, hosts and reporters after a card-signing drive elicited support from
more than 50 per cent of non-management employees.
Quebecor didn’t get its way when the CIRB granted interim certification to the CMG in June to represent operations and current affairs employees. However, the station had already announced programming changes to take effect this
summer and laid off a significant number of current affairs staff.
The local TV station, launched in the autumn of 2003 by Craig Media and sold to Quebecor in 2004, has a young and diverse workforce and has become known for its revolving door. “Do they want a permanent job with good money? Absolutely,” Smyth says of the station’s employees. “Would they stay if they could? Probably. They want respect,” Smyth adds. “They don’t like getting arbitrary orders and they are worried about layoffs every day.”
Smyth thinks managers like the idea of continuously hiring young people into media jobs because there is a sense “they are easy to push around.” However, seeing big differences in the salaries of people doing essentially the same work, as well as unfair shift assignments, has turned many younger workers on to the idea of joining a union.
One of the challenges at Toronto 1 was that the ethos of temporary employment in the media industry had spread beyond management into the ranks of front-line workers. Even card-signers who believe in trying to make the station a better place to work think there are greener pastures somewhere else, and leave. “The problem is, it’s the same everywhere,” Smyth says.
There is at least one bright spot emerging in the Canadian broadcast industry: the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, which recently applied for a renewal of its broadcast license with unqualified support from employees. The station hopes to get an increase in cable subscription
fees, in part to finance additional news bureaus across the country. Like Toronto 1, most of APTN’s programming is bought from outside and network employees work on flagship news and current affairs programs.
APTN had a rocky start after going on the air in 1999. The network ran into financial difficulty and contemplated mass layoffs around the time the editorial staff joined the guild in 2002. The operations bargaining unit was certified in 2004.
“The main issues we were fighting for were overtime and job security,” says CMG member Russell Wells, who works in graphics and is APTN branch president for the union. “The network was in a severe deficit and wasn’t able to maintain business relations with its suppliers. Many of
us felt a union was necessary to protect our jobs and seniority.”
“I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be,” says Greg Taylor, a videojournalist with APTN, in Ottawa. “It’s the only place I’ll ever be able to do stories about M‚tis on a regular basis. Why would I leave? In mainstream journalism, it would take up almost a whole piece to do the
background on a story (about an aboriginal issue). At APTN, you can assume the knowledge is there and do more in-depth pieces.”
Taylor says that, at APTN, the discussion about what is involved in making news is very inclusive. “It really is a bottom-up process.” Members of the operations crew are known to contribute story ideas because they live in the communities APTN covers. The result is a less alienating workplace culture for news gatherers than the ones found in more traditional, top-down newsrooms.
APTN is also making an effort to develop skills and experience among aboriginal broadcast workers and to promote aboriginal people into management positions. “People are now talking about a career at APTN,” says Taylor. And that’s particularly significant, considering that aboriginal people are under-represented in the mainstream media workforce.
“I enjoy the work I do at the CBC, but it’s unfortunate there’s nothing permanent,” says Marie Banzon, a recent immigrant and experienced reporter who works on contract for the public broadcaster, whose workers are represented by the Canadian Media Guild. “We have a lot of people who are casual so, if the CBC needed to cut more people, they could do it very easily.
However, how the actual work would be done is a different problem.”
Meanwhile, back at the CBC, TV reporter Marie Banzon is hanging on in a career that has not offered her any security as a reward for her hard work and flexibility. She was first hired more than two and a half years ago at the CBC to work on a story because her language skills were
needed. After that, she completed a six-week internship with the broadcaster in the hopes that she would get hired on full-time, or at least get contract work. The employer hadn’t promised her anything, but she was still disappointed at not hearing from them after her internship was over.
“To keep my foot in the door, I freelanced for 10 months,” says Banzon. “Then I finally got my first contract, for about five months.” That contract was extended for a few weeks and then Banzon was again thrown back into the world of casual and freelance work. “Recently,” she says, “I got another five-month contract.” Banzon is still trying to land a full-time gig.
Karen Wirsig is the communications coordinator for the Canadian Media Guild (www.cmg.ca)
Posted by: Derek Blackadder (Profile) | @ Sat, 27 Aug 2005 14:04:
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Missing or dead in Gurgaon | ||
| OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | ||
New Delhi, Aug. 26: At least 17 workers of Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India are still missing after the July 25 police baton-charge and should be presumed dead, a non-official probe says. The Haryana government, which has not carried out an inquiry into the beating, has denied that anyone was killed. But the Citizens’ Committee — made up of labour leaders, social activists and academics – asks the state authorities to either trace the missing workers or consider them dead and compensate the families. According to Honda union members, however, the number of missing workers is 28. “We have tried to find them without any success. We’ll make one last-ditch attempt to ascertain their fate,” said Surinder Singh, union vice-president, whom the police allegedly presumed dead and dumped on a hillock on the day of the lathi-charge. Some 800 workers of the Japanese company were caned after they ringed the mini-secretariat in Gurgaon to protest against police action earlier in the day to break a highway blockade. “No deputy commissioner can garner the courage to order a lathi-charge on sitting workers without having the protection of higher-ups,” said JNU professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a member of the committee, whose report has already been sent to the National Human Rights Commission. “According to the police manual, (a) lathi-charge can be ordered only if methods like teargas and water cannon have failed.” The union’s advocate, R. Pathak, claims he saw a worker being killed in custody. “One of the injured workers, Subhash Dewan, was beaten up mercilessly in front of my eyes and was given third-degree treatment in the lock-up. When he succumbed, the police burnt his body by dousing kerosene.” Pathak was booked on the charge of attempt to murder after he said the deputy commissioner, too, was hitting workers with a stick. He alleges he was tortured in the lock-up. Pathak said the Gurgaon deputy commissioner, Sudhir Rajpal, and senior superintendent of police Yogendra Nehra have been given plum postings, as administrator of the Haryana Urban Development Authority and senior superintendent of police, vigilance, respectively. The committee’s report demands suspension of both, an inquiry against them and severe punishment if found guilty. The report also asks that a mechanism be devised to establish the government’s responsibility in such instances. |
| '부시-김정일 뽀뽀' 합성 사진 화제 | ||
| [마이데일리 2005-07-24 15:50] | ||
[마이데일리 = 박은정 기자] 부시와 김정일이 뽀뽀를 했다고? 부시 미국 대통령과 김정일 북한 국방위원장이 키스하는 장면을 담은 사진이 인터넷에 올라 화제다. 물론 합성 사진이다. 미국의 유머사이트 펀픽(funpic)에 아이디 bockscar가 올린 이 사진에서는 말그대로 부시와 김정일이 입맞춤을 하고 있다. 눈을 지긋히 감은 이들의 입맞춤이 담긴 사진을 본 네티즌들은 깜짝 놀랐다. 표정도 표정이지만 입술을 내민듯한 이 둘의 절묘한 합성은 마치 진짜같은 착각을 불러일으키기 때문이다. 이를 본 한 네티즌은 "마치 남녀 커플을 보는것 같다. 남자역에는 부시, 여자역에는 김정일이 부시의 키스를 받아들이는 것처럼 보인다"고도 말했다. 그 동안 미국과 북한과의 악화된 관계를 빗대, 둘의 레슬링 장면이나 총을 겨누는 등 '서로 잡아먹지 못해 안달난' 모습의 패러디물이 인터넷상에서 주류를 이뤄왔다. 하지만 이 패러디물은 그와 정반대 분위기여서 주목된다. 인터넷 패러디도 최근 북한의 6자 회담 재개 선언 등 일단 대화 국면으로 돌아선 남북 및 북미 관계 분위기를 반영하는 것은 아닐까. [부시 미국 대통령과 김정일 북한 국방위원장의 키스 합성 사진. 사진출처=go.funpic.hu] |
| At least 150 die in Pakistan crash | |
LAHORE, Pakistan -- Three trains have collided in southern Pakistan Wdnesday  morning, killing at least 150 people and injuring 800 more, police and railway officials have said.At least 17 train cars were destroyed in the accident that occurred at 3:40 a.m. local time (22:40 Tuesday GMT) at Ghotki railway station. Police, army and paramilitary forces are assisting in the rescue operation and area hospitals are on emergency notice. The Chairman of Pakistan Railways, Shakil Durani, told CNN there were about 3,000 passengers on the three trains. One train rammed into the back of another after missing a signal, Durani said. This caused several cars to derail, which in turn were struck by another train. The trains involved were the Karachi Express which rammed into the stationary Quetta Express. The derailed carriages were then hit almost simultaneously by a third train, the oncoming Tezgam Express, which was taking passengers from Karachi north to Rawalpindi, near the capital of Islamabad. The Karachi Express is a night-coach passenger train that brings people from the city of Lahore to the southern port city of Karachi. Ghotki is about 600 kilometers (370 miles) northeast of Karachi, in remote Sindh province. Pakistan's railways are antiquated, and dozens of people have been killed in train accidents in recent years. On March 5, five people were killed and 25 injured when a passenger train derailed in eastern Punjab province. On September 20, 2003, a train ploughed into a packed bus in central Pakistan, killing at least 27 people and injuring six others. Accidents are often blamed on faulty equipment or human error.-CNN | |
| Police hunt possible master bomber | |
| LONDON, England (CNN) -- Police were urgently addressing Wednesday whether four young British Muslims suspected of carrying out suicide attacks in London last week were working with a master bomber who may still be at large. They are now trying to determine the origin of the high explosives used in the devices in the hop  that could lead them to the architect of the attacks, the UK's Press Association said. Officers fear it could be a senior al Qaeda operative who arrived in the country several months ago and then fled the day before the atrocity, PA added. Police say it is "very likely" that one of the four died in the blasts on London's transport network, and it is possible that all four blew themselves up deliberately in what would be Europe's first suicide bombings. Britain's interior minister, Home Secretary Charles Clarke, meanwhile warned of further attacks despite police tracing three likely suspects in the bombings to Leeds, northern England. "We have to assume there are others who are ready to do the kinds of things that these people did last Thursday," Clarke told the BBC. Clarke is in Brussels for an emergency anti-terrorist meeting of European Union ministers. U.S. intelligence agencies are checking the names of the London bombers against their databases looking for any U.S. connection, President Bush told chief executives at a private White House meeting Tuesday, The Associated Press reported. The investigation continued in Leeds, 190 miles (300 km) north of London, where police Tuesday seized explosives and arrested a relative of one of the suspects. The relative was brought to London for questioning. The investigation also was continuing in Luton, 30 miles (48 km) north of the capital where police carried out a controlled explosion on a car parked at a train station there. It was believed to be linked to the bombings and the BBC reported that it contained explosives. Both Leeds and Luton have large Muslim populations, and police were trying to find out whether either city was harboring a terrorist cell or a bombmaker, possibly from al Qaeda, who might have planned the bombings that killed at least 52 people and injured 700, Reuters reported. CNN's John Vause in Leeds said it was believed the four bombers were so-called "cleanskins" or "lilywhites" -- with no convictions or known terrorist involvement. This was a major concern for the authorities, he said. It is thought the four lacked the expertise to plan the operation or construct the bombs. Senior sources told PA that they feared the "plotters and planners" were still at large. A senior security source told the news agency: "Where is the person who had the expertise to organize it all? "There is the possibility that it could be al Qaeda -- someone who would have been sent to the country to do the preparation and then would have left the day before the attack." Britain's Times newspaper said Wednesday the mastermind behind the attacks as well as the bombmaker were still thought to be at large. Police found a "bomb factory" during the Leeds raids, the newspaper said. The four men, believed to be aged between 19 and 30 and British nationals of ethnic Pakistani origin., were captured on closed-circuit television at King's Cross Thameslink rail station shortly before the series of deadly bombings rocked London last Thursday. Police have confirmed the identity of one of the four suspects as Shahzad Tanweer from Leeds, a 22-year-old sports science graduate who occasionally helped out in his father's fast food shop. He is the man who died in the Aldgate tube blast, PA reported. A neighbor of Tanweer told the British television network ITN that Tanweer had told him he had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, spending a couple of months in Afghanistan and four months in Lahore, Pakistan. CNN's Vause said neighbors described Tanweer as a quiet young man, a devout Muslim who would go to the mosque sometimes five times a day but who also loved cricket and was an avid sports fan. The Muslim Council of Britain said it was stunned that English Muslims appeared to have carried out the attacks. "We have received today's terrible news from the police with anguish, shock and horror," the organization's secretary-general, Iqbal Sacranie, said in a statement. "Nothing in Islam can ever justify the evil actions of the bombers." Police said the four suspects traveled to London on the day of the blasts and were seen on closed-circuit television carrying rucksacks at the King's Cross rail station shortly before 8:30 a.m. The first three bombs exploded virtually simultaneously around 8:50 a.m. A police source told Reuters the four looked relaxed, more like they were going on a hiking holiday than a suicide mission. The government has said the attacks on three subway trains and a bus bear the hallmark of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and the Madrid bombings last year. On Tuesday, police searched six locations in West Yorkshire, where three of the men lived, and made one arrest. The home addresses of three of the men were among the locations searched, police said. Reported missing Many of the people living in the same street as the Tanweer family are from Pakistan and the disputed Kashmir region. However, Muslims make up a relatively small percentage of the overall population in the area. Another man, a 19-year-old, was reported missing by his mother at 10:20 p.m. on Thursday after failing to return home from London, the UK's Press Association reported. He had told his parents that he was going to the capital on the day of the bombings with friends, PA said. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terror branch, said the family's report led investigators to the four suspects. Authorities say the man reported as missing "was joined on his journey to London by three other men." The police found personal documents bearing the names of three of the four men near the train seats where the bombs exploded, Clarke said. "Very strong forensic and other evidence" led police to believe one of the West Yorkshire men died in the explosion on a train between the Aldgate and Liverpool Street stations, Clarke added. Police are waiting for additional information from the coroner, he said. Authorities made one arrest Tuesday while executing six search warrants in West Yorkshire. The man will be brought to London for questioning, Clarke said, providing no further detail. Five of the entries police made during their searches were consensual, while the sixth occurred at an unoccupied property -- where police, aided by army troops, used a "controlled explosion" to gain entry, Cramphorn said. London police have taken more than 700 witness statements and received more than 2,000 calls to the anti-terror hotline, said Andy Hayman, London police assistant commissioner and head of specialist operations. Officers are also reviewing 2,500 tapes of closed-circuit television footage from across the capital as scores of families await news of loved ones feared killed. Officials have said they expect the number of dead to rise. Scotland Yard said Tuesday 11 victims have so far been positively identified. Forensics experts have said it could take weeks to identify all the bodies recovered, many of which were mangled in Thursday's attacks. Other developments • U.S. officials lifted a ban preventing about 10,000 U.S. military personnel -- based at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath, both in the eastern English county of Suffolk -- from going into the Greater London area. The instruction to U.S. forces had contradicted the message from politicians, including London's mayor, for people to return to the capital. • Britain's finance minister, Gordon Brown, vowed Tuesday that the European Union would unite to defeat terrorism and clamp down on the financing that feeds it.-CNN | |
| Brad Pitt hospitalized | |
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Actr  Brad Pitt has been hospitalized with a flu-like illness.Pitt, 41, checked himself into an undisclosed Los Angeles area hospital Monday night complaining of flu-like symptoms, his publicist Cindy Guagenti said Tuesday. There were no other details and the name of the hospital wasn't disclosed for security reasons. Pitt was in Ethiopia last week with his "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" co-star Angelina Jolie to pick up the actress's newly adopted baby girl, the second child she has adopted. Guagenti said it wasn't known if the actor contracted the illness while in Africa. "I think he has the flu," the spokeswoman said. The "Troy" and "Fight Club" star separated from "Friends" actress Jennifer Aniston in January after 4 1/2 years of marriage and she filed for divorce in March citing irreconcilable differences.-CNN | |
All 309 on Board Survive Fiery Plane Accident in Toronto |
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| 2005-8-3 10:48:48 CRIENGLISH.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More than 300 people escaped with their lives Tuesday after an Air France passenger jet skidded off a runway at Pearson International Airport. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Only 43 of the 297 passengers and 12 crew members aboard Air France Flight 358 from Paris sustained what were mostly minor injuries in the dramatic crash, which unfolded shortly after 4 p.m. ET right in front of commuters at the peak of the daily rush hour. "It happened so quickly," said Gwen Dunlop, a Toronto resident who was on the flight on her way home from a summer vacation in France. "It was a little like being in a movie. It was scary, because it did land OK for a few seconds and we actually clapped - we clapped because we were down. We clapped and only seconds later there was a big, big (impact)." Seconds later, the cabin rapidly began to fill with smoke as passengers scrambled to get off the plane, Dunlop said. "At some point the wing was off and it was smoking badly," she said. "The oxygen masks never came down. The plane was filling up with smoke." Many passengers, including one of the co-pilots, escaped the wreckage in the moments after the crash and climbed out of Etobicoke Creek ravine and on to the highway, said Peel police Sgt. Glyn Griffiths. "We located the co-pilot on Highway 401," Griffiths said. Passengers were buffeted with heavy rain and howling winds as they scrambled up the muddy banks of the ravine in an effort to get to safety - and away from the flaming wreckage. "There was the fear of the explosion because we were all trying to go up a hill that was all mud," she said. "We had lost our shoes, we were just scrambling, and there were people with children. The rain was just coming down, and the wind and the lightning. We were just thrown into the weather and thrown into everything. There were people climbing over seats to get out." Everyone on board the Airbus 340 jet, which is capable of carrying 350 passengers, was able to get off the plane before it caught fire. It was the first crash for an Airbus 340 in 13 years of commercial service. Several area hospitals braced for an onslaught of injuries that never came. A one-year-old baby was taken to Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children for smoke inhalation, and would likely be kept overnight for observation. Another 13 people were taken to William Osler Health Centre in Etobicoke, west of Toronto, and two others to the Peel Memorial Emergency Department in Brampton, to the north. No details of their condition were made available. At about 8:30 p.m. passengers wrapped in red blankets were taken to an airport hotel and reunited with their families. Most seemed composed, despite their harrowing ordeal. For many hours, flames and black smoke could be seen shooting from the downed plane's broken fuselage. Moments after the aircraft crashed 200 metres at the end of the runway amid lightning strikes and driving rain at 4:03 p.m., dirty smoke billowed across the landscape, obscuring the view for passing drivers as the acrid smell of burning jet fuel hung heavy in the air, even several kilometres away. The fact no one was killed in the crash was "miraculous," said acting Peel police Sgt. Craig Platt. "It's a relief there are no fatalities." Air France issued a statement saying it was making arrangements to help families stranded in Canada. "Air France is doing everything possible to take care of the passengers of this flight and bring the necessary assistance to their families and loved ones," the airline said. Passenger Roel Bramar said he saw lightning in the sky as the plane was descending. "Just as we landed, the lights turned off and that's unusual," Bramar reported. "The captain wanted to lower the plane as quickly as possible." Glenn Schiller, a passenger in a plane that had already landed on the tarmac, watched the scene unfold. "At the time the rain was coming down sideways," he said. "It was a vicious, vicious thunderstorm." Thunderstorms create the possibility of wind shear - the sudden, dangerous air currents that can push an aircraft into the ground during takeoff and landing. It was not immediately apparent whether the plane had been struck by lightning. As emergency crews sped to the scene, commuters on their way home from work on the multi-lane highway became snared in a massive traffic jam. At one point, another huge plume of smoke emerged from the wreckage, but it was unclear whether it was from an explosion. A row of emergency vehicles lined up behind the wreck, and a fire truck sprayed the flames with water and foam. By 8 p.m., authorities were reporting that the fire had been extinguished. Within minutes of the crash, with scant details about the injuries, the number of passengers and circumstances of the crash available, the spectacle was being broadcast live on television in Canada and the United States, much of it with the help of automated Ministry of Transportation cameras mounted to monitor the flow of highway traffic. Flights scheduled to land at Pearson were diverted to other Canadian airports. The most serious plane crash at Pearson, Canada's busiest airport, was more than 30 years ago. In 1970 an Air Canada DC-8 jet, en route from Montreal to Los Angeles, went down north of the airport, killing all 109 people aboard. The last major jumbo jet crash in North America was on Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 lost part of its tail and plummeted into a New York City neighbourhood, killing 265 people. Safety investigators concluded the crash was caused by the pilot moving the rudder too aggressively. Pearson had been operating under vigilant security measures in the wake of deadly bombings in London. The federal Transportation Safety Board wasn't offering any clues Tuesday about the cause of the crash, but a team would be taking over the site and recovering the flight's cockpit voice recorder and data recorder to piece together what happened. "It's like a series of crime scene investigations," said spokesman Conrad Bellehumeur. The agency will also interview passengers, crew, witnesses and air traffic controllers, and review both the radar and voice versions of recordings of the air traffic control activity, Bellehumeur said. "We're going to follow every lead and as soon as we see something of importance that might have contributed to the crash, we'll make that known publicly. Normally accidents of this kind are not caused by one single factor."
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Passengers survive plane inferno | |||
Flight 358 from Paris burned for more than two hours after the crash landing in bad weather at 1603 (2003 GMT). "We were really, really scared the plane would blow up," passenger Olivier Dubois told a Canadian TV station. The accident was the first major crash of an Airbus A340-300 since the model's first flight in October 1991. The accident took place in heavy rain near Highway 401, one of Canada's busiest motorways, and emergency vehicles raced to the scene.
Some 24 people aboard the plane were treated for minor injuries, officials said.
Roel Bramar, a passenger on the plane, told Canada's CBC broadcaster that there was mayhem aboard the airliner after the impact. "I was at the very end, and second off the plane. I was just running like crazy. There was quite a bit of fire on the ground." Several witnesses said they thought the plane had been struck by lightning as the power went out just before the plane landed. First accident The plane crashed through barriers and fell into a small ravine, tail in the air. It overshot the runway by some 200m (660ft), Steve Shaw of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority told reporters at a hastily organised news conference.
Mr Shaw said it appeared that all the passengers were evacuated before the plane was "heavily damaged by fire". One witness said rescue workers got to the airliner within 50 seconds. Mr Shaw said the airport had been under a "red alert" since midday Tuesday because of danger of lightning. "There was quite a downpour," CBC journalist John Finday said. "The visibility was really bad, with lots of lightning." The A340 has an excellent safety record - with no crashes reported before Tuesday, aircraft expert David Learmount told the BBC. "Modern airliners are like that. They don't have accidents. If this one has had an accident it's the first." Mayhem Mr Dubois told CTV that the plane "was going pretty fast" just before the landing. He said suddenly "it was all black in the plane, there was no more light". "And then we went off the runway, we were in the ravine and the plane was continuing rolling on the ravine and then there were a lot of flames. "The plane stopped. We opened the emergency doors and basically there were lots of flames around. "We were really, really scared that the plane would blow up... We just tried to escape, sliding from the plane and running in the countryside," Mr Dubois said.
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A Tale of Chandra Kumari Gurung [Top]
Can anyone assume that a normal, balanced person can be treated as a mad person? How that person will feel if that person kept at psychiatric hospital? It’s not a question of imagination! It’s the real story! It happened with our sister! “Because of the carelessness of the Korean police and the state, a balanced Nepali women spent her seven years of life in psychiatric hospital with misbalanced person.
Innocent, hardly Nepali speaker Chandra Kumari Gurung of nearing 40 went Korea to work in 1992. Her life in Korea was as same as other migrant labour in Korea.
That was Sunday –the Korean holiday, Chandra wanted to have her food near by her resident area. The food was good in restaurant. No body knows that same food could be the start date of her dark days.
It was mystery for the Nepali friends in Korea that suddenly a normal sister disappeared from them. All the efforts were worthless at that time no information about her.
Thanks for the Koran friends who succeed to come out with information and brought her in her own world after six years and four months of her disappeared.
That day a normal, balanced Nepali sister went to the cash counter to pay her food bill. Unfortunately, she lost her wallet. She checked her own body and spoke in her own native language –“Where I lost my money”. Because of the loosing money she was quite upset and even cried. She asked to excuse her. There was only fault of Chandra that she couldn’t speak in Korean language and could not make understand the Korean restaurant owner that she was in real problem. No one was there to understand her. The restaurant owner called the police and she tried to make convince the police. They tried to find some valid documents with her, which say some things about her. She didn’t have that in the same moment. Because of her own native language speaking, the police personnel thought that she is misbalanced and mad.
She was kept in the psychiatric hospital and forced her to have misbalanced medicine. A normal, balanced Nepali woman spent her life as a mad and misbalanced person.
A doctor familiar with Nepal and Nepali people met her and disclosed this miserable story of one Nepali sister. The story was publicized and created uproar in Korea.
After her release from the hospital in April 2000 Koran lawyer Suk-tae Lee helped for demanding compensation for her incarceration, and a formal apology from the South Korean State. Finally the court made verdict to pay $23,500 for the compensation. But the warm love of Korean people is with her. These friends collected some amount of money and handover to Chandra.
- Presented by Buddhi Acharya
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한 산업연수생이 밤에 공장 기숙사 앞 화단에서 죽은채 발견되어 자살 여부를 놓고 논란이 일고 있다. 경찰은 자살 가능성에 무게를 두고 있지만, 이주 노동자 인권단체는 실족사 가능성을 제기하고 있다. 창원중부경찰서는 창원 신촌동 기계부품회사인 ㅇ기계 소속 네팔 출신 산업연수생 다칼(31)씨 사망사건을 수사 중이다. 지난 2일 밤 10시30분경 기숙사 앞 화단에서 다칼씨가 피를 흘리며 숨져 있는 것을 동료가 발견해 경찰에 신고했다. 다칼씨는 기숙사 건물에서 6m 가량 떨어진 곳에서 발견되었고, 특별한 외상이 발견되지 않았다. 경찰은 평소 다칼씨가 후두염을 앓아왔다는 점을 들어 신병을 비관해 자살한 것으로 보고 있다. 창원중부경찰서 관계자는 "평소 몸이 아픈 상태에서 치료도 받지 못했고, 우울증을 앓았다는 말도 있다"고 말했다. 그는 "기숙사는 5층인데 옥상 위에 있는 물탱크에 올라가 뛰어내린 것으로 추정된다"면서 "자살에 무게를 두고 있다"고 말했다. 경남외국인노동자상담소 관계자는 "다칼씨의 친구와 동생의 증언에 의하면, 사건이 벌어지기 30분 전에 통화를 했는데 자살의 분위기를 느낄 수 있는 말은 없었다고 한다"면서 "타살 내지 실족사 등 여러 가지 가능성에 대해 조사를 해봐야 한다"고 말했다. 다칼씨는 동생과 함께 국내로 들어와 산업연수생으로 있었으며, 동생은 현재 서울에서 지내고 있다. 다칼씨의 동생은 선교원 통역사와 함께 창원을 찾아 경찰서에서 진술을 하기도 했다. 창원중부경찰서 관계자는 "자살에 의문을 제기한다면 정확한 사인을 알기 위해 부검도 해야할 것 같다"고 말했다. 네팔은 시신을 화장하지 않고 매장하는 문화가 있어 다칼씨의 시신을 네팔까지 옮기는데도 애를 먹고 있다. 네팔에 있는 다칼씨 부모들은 곧바로 이송해 오기를 바라고 있는 것으로 알려졌지만, 수속을 밟는데 적어도 1개월 이상 소요될 것으로 보여 경비 조달 등에 어려움을 겪을 것으로 보인다. 한편 4일 기자와 만난 ㅇ기계 관계자는 "아무 말을 할 수 없다"면서 인터뷰를 꺼렸다. |
Brussels, 1 July 2005 (ICFTU OnLine): More than 250,000 people have taken part in public protests over the past two days against the conservative Australian Federal Government’s plans to remove protection from unfair dismissal for most workers, impose heavy restrictions on union organising and collective bargaining rights, push workers onto individual employment contracts and weaken mechanisms for setting minimum wages. Pokhara valley is a land of diversity.Every place contains its own value, its own uniqueness , and its own casts and culture. In Pokhara you can find varieties of casts. Every particular place is famous because of their people who lives there who breaths there.Here Here most of the people belongs to Gurung (Tamu) cast.
Here is a small description about this cast:
This place is the main symbolism of Gurung Cast (Tamu). This place represents the whole Gurungs. This specific gurung organization called Tamu Pye Lhu Sangh was established on 3, 2047 of Kartik(1990-20, Oct) at Shaktighat. In this particular place gurungs used to gather and used to worship to their ancestors.
From the cultural and traditional cultural point of view, gurungs are
called rich. The 3 men shown in the photo Pachyu, Ghyabri, and Bonpo Lama respectively are 3 Gurus (Khegi) of Gurung and the written information given on the wall informs us how the fire originated.
These are the historical equipments used by the Bonpo Lama (Medic Wizards)
One of the main and amazing features of Gurung’s is that they used to calculate one’s age by Barga (Loh).There are 12 different animals who represents one’s age and they are arranged in a single circle.
The swinging flag on the top of house is called as Aala and the hanging instruments is called as Tautu
This is also a snap of death ceremony. Gurung people used to give special priority to someone’s death farewell. All funeral process is called as Arghu in which statue called Plha is builded in front of house as you can see in the picture model.
The main motive of this Tamu Pye Lhu Sangh is to bring all the Gurungs together in a single chain. Spreading the message of Love, peace and brother
Plane fire footage
윤성효(cjnews) 기자 
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ya, shi... i miss you so much..i wanna be back home...
i wanna meet you and all the other comrades..
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hi kristain how ru?miss u alots thankx for mess how is the days passed in german.may i know yours tel plz ?i will call you.my dear comrade where ever you r but always happiness and healthyness.see u again .부가 정보