At least 84 killed in Australia fires
　

NUCLEAR BOMB: As thousands of survivors crammed into community halls and schools, more than 3,000 firefighters were battling the worst fire disaster in the country’s history

AFP , KINGLAKE, AUSTRALIA
Monday, Feb 09, 2009, Page 1
　

“Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria in the last 24 hours.”— Kevin Rudd, Australian prime minister

At least 84 people were killed and entire towns razed in the worst wildfire disaster in Australian history, described by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “hell in all its fury.”

People died in their cars as they attempted to escape the inferno — smoldering wrecks on roads outside this town told a tale of horror — while others were burned to death in their homes.

The toll looked set to rise further as medics treated badly burned survivors and emergency crews made it through to more than 700 houses destroyed by the fires, some of which have been blamed on arsonists.

Thousands of survivors jammed community halls, schools and other makeshift accommodation as troops and firefighters battled to control huge blazes fed by tinder-box conditions after a once-in-a-century heatwave.

“Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria in the last 24 hours. Many good people lie dead, many injured,” Rudd told reporters, deploying army units to help 3,000 firefighters battling the flames.

The number of dead rose steadily as rescue crews reached townships that bore the brunt of the most intense firestorm northwest of Melbourne, which survivors likened to a nuclear bomb.

The previous highest death toll in Australian wildfires was 75 people killed in Victoria and neighboring South Australia in 1983 on what became known as Ash Wednesday.

The latest fires in Australia’s southeast flared on Saturday, fanned by high winds after a heatwave sent temperatures soaring to 46˚C and continued to burn out of control yesterday.

They wiped out the pretty resort village of Marysville and largely destroyed the town of Kinglake north of Melbourne, with houses, shops, gas stations and schools razed to the ground.

Marie Jones said she was staying at a friend’s house in Kinglake, where at least 18 people perished, when a badly burned man arrived with his infant daughter saying his wife and other child had been killed.

“He was so badly burnt,” she told the Melbourne Age’s Web site.

“He had skin hanging off him everywhere and his little girl was burnt, but not as badly as her dad, and he just came down and he said ‘Look, I’ve lost my wife, I’ve lost my other kid, I just need you to save [my daughter].’”

A road was strewn with wrecked cars telling of desperate, failed attempts to escape.

The cars appeared to have crashed into each other or into trees as towering flames put an end to their desperate flight from the town.

Some did not even make it onto the road, said Victoria Harvey, a resident waiting at a roadblock to be allowed to return to the site of her destroyed home.

She told reporters of a local businessman who lost two of his children as the family tried to flee.

“He apparently went to put his kids in the car, put them in, turned around to go grab something from the house, then his car was on fire with his kids in it and they burnt,” she said.

In Kinglake scores of homes were leveled, some with just the roof lying flat on the ground where the house had stood.

The gasoline station and shops were also destroyed and the town was deserted except for police and forensic experts.

Police Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe said there was no doubt that arsonists were behind some of the fires.

“Some of these fires have started in localities that could only be by hand, it could not be natural causes,” he said.

Police have warned that arsonists could face murder charges.

The government’s Australian Institute of Criminology released a report last week which said half the country’s 20,000 to 30,000 bushfires each year are deliberate. At least 84 people were killed and entire towns razed in the worst wildfire disaster in Australian history, described by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “hell in all its fury.”

People died in their cars as they attempted to escape the inferno — smoldering wrecks on roads outside this town told a tale of horror — while others were burned to death in their homes.

The toll looked set to rise further as medics treated badly burned survivors and emergency crews made it through to more than 700 houses destroyed by the fires, some of which have been blamed on arsonists.

Thousands of survivors jammed community halls, schools and other makeshift accommodation as troops and firefighters battled to control huge blazes fed by tinder-box conditions after a once-in-a-century heatwave.

“Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria in the last 24 hours. Many good people lie dead, many injured,” Rudd told reporters, deploying army units to help 3,000 firefighters battling the flames.

The number of dead rose steadily as rescue crews reached townships that bore the brunt of the most intense firestorm northwest of Melbourne, which survivors likened to a nuclear bomb.

The previous highest death toll in Australian wildfires was 75 people killed in Victoria and neighboring South Australia in 1983 on what became known as Ash Wednesday.

The latest fires in Australia’s southeast flared on Saturday, fanned by high winds after a heatwave sent temperatures soaring to 46˚C and continued to burn out of control yesterday.

They wiped out the pretty resort village of Marysville and largely destroyed the town of Kinglake north of Melbourne, with houses, shops, gas stations and schools razed to the ground.

Marie Jones said she was staying at a friend’s house in Kinglake, where at least 18 people perished, when a badly burned man arrived with his infant daughter saying his wife and other child had been killed.

“He was so badly burnt,” she told the Melbourne Age’s Web site.

“He had skin hanging off him everywhere and his little girl was burnt, but not as badly as her dad, and he just came down and he said ‘Look, I’ve lost my wife, I’ve lost my other kid, I just need you to save [my daughter].’”

A road was strewn with wrecked cars telling of desperate, failed attempts to escape.

The cars appeared to have crashed into each other or into trees as towering flames put an end to their desperate flight from the town.

Some did not even make it onto the road, said Victoria Harvey, a resident waiting at a roadblock to be allowed to return to the site of her destroyed home.

She told reporters of a local businessman who lost two of his children as the family tried to flee.

“He apparently went to put his kids in the car, put them in, turned around to go grab something from the house, then his car was on fire with his kids in it and they burnt,” she said.

In Kinglake scores of homes were leveled, some with just the roof lying flat on the ground where the house had stood.

The gasoline station and shops were also destroyed and the town was deserted except for police and forensic experts.

Police Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe said there was no doubt that arsonists were behind some of the fires.

“Some of these fires have started in localities that could only be by hand, it could not be natural causes,” he said.

Police have warned that arsonists could face murder charges.

The government’s Australian Institute of Criminology released a report last week which said half the country’s 20,000 to 30,000 bushfires each year are deliberate.

Most smoking ban violations occur in workplace: activists
　

By Shelley Huang
STAFF REPORTER
Monday, Feb 09, 2009, Page 3

A month after the new tobacco regulations took effect, the John Tung Foundation yesterday said it was disappointed with the way health officials had implemented the law, saying officials had caused confusion.

The Tobacco Hazard Prevention and Control Act (菸害防制法), that came into effect on Jan. 11, prohibits smoking in public spaces and offices with three or more employees, as well as requiring businesses to display no-smoking signs. It also limits tobacco marketing activities to a minimum.

The anti-smoking group said yesterday that in the one month since the tobacco ban went into effect, it had received 142 reports of violations. As many as 80 percent, or 110 of the reports, were complaints filed by workers who reporting violations in the workplace.

Yau Sea-wain (姚思遠), president of the foundation, said that because the law prohibits smoking in “offices with three or more employees” and “public indoor spaces,” it would be a violation of the law to smoke in stairways, corridors and restrooms, all of which are commonly mistaken by smokers to be places where smoking is allowed.

“We originally thought that [the complaints] would be mainly about violations in cafes, restaurants, bus and train stations, and outside hospitals. But it turns out that they are mostly about the workplace,” Yau said.

“This is because the government [Bureau of Health Promotion] was unclear about the regulations and not strict enough when it came to implementing the law,” said Yau, who is also dean of the Chinese Culture University’s College of Law.

On day two of the tobacco ban, Bureau of Health Promotion Director-General Hsiao Mei-ling (蕭美玲) said that smoking was allowed outside a 10m radius of hospitals, train and bus stations, school campuses, government agencies, post offices, banks, offices with three or more people, performance halls, movie theaters, hotels, shopping malls and most restaurants. Her comments were made in response to disputes between health officials and businesses and individuals caused by confusion over the “gray areas” of the law.

The foundation slammed the bureau for misinterpreting the law and ignoring the intent of the act. As a result, “the Tobacco Hazard Prevention and Control Act scores only 80 points [out of 100],” Yau said.

“The disputes surrounding the new Tobacco Hazard Prevention and Control Act leave both smokers and non-smokers not knowing what to do,” said Sun Li-chun (孫立群), president of Consumer Reports Taiwan. “It’s disappointing the way [the bureau] enforced the law.”

China struggles to cope with severe drought

AP AND AFP, BEIJING
Monday, Feb 09, 2009, Page 5

Parts of China’s parched north got light rain after authorities fired shells loaded with cloud-seeding chemicals into the sky, but there was no end in sight for its worst drought in five decades, the government said yesterday.

Beijing has declared an emergency across China’s north, where 4.4 million people lack adequate drinking water and winter wheat crops are withering.

“The drought situation will not be eased in the near future,” a national weather bureau statement said.

Some areas got a sprinkling of rain and sleet on Saturday after clouds were hit with 2,392 rockets and 409 cannon shells loaded with chemicals, the weather bureau said. It said clouds were thin and moving out of the region, making conditions poor for more rainmaking.

Rainfall in northern and central China is 50 percent to 80 percent below normal, the Flood Control and Drought Relief Office said. Xinhua news agency said the drought that started in November threatens up to half the wheat crop in eight provinces — Hebei, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi and Gansu.

On Saturday, one county in Shaanxi received 23mm of precipitation, the weather bureau said. Other areas received less than 5mm.

State television yesterday showed farmers with parched wheat seedlings that were barely ankle-high.

Beijing has promised 86.7 billion yuan (US$12.6 billion) in aid to struggling farmers. That will add to the strain on government finances as it carries out a multibillion-dollar stimulus package to boost slowing economic growth.

The Agriculture Ministry said the drought is to blame for an outbreak of a fungal disease called stripe rust that attacks wheat.

It said the disease can cut output by up to 40 percent.

Drinking water is being trucked to villagers and the government is launching a massive irrigation effort with water from rivers and wells.

Water Resources Minister Chen Lei (陳雷) said water levels in the Yellow River, a key source for farms and a string of cities, are down 20 percent to 40 percent, the People’s Daily newspaper reported.

Across eight provinces, irrigation has brought water to about half the 11 million hectares of drought-affected wheat crops, the Agriculture Ministry said on its Web site yesterday.

Authorities said they would divert water from the country’s two longest rivers to help farmers deal with the drought, state media said yesterday.

Water from the Yangtze River, the country’s longest, will be diverted to the northern areas of eastern Jiangsu Province, Xinhua reported, citing Zhang Zhitong, a senior Ministry of Water Resources emergency official.

Floodgates will also be opened in Inner Mongolia along the Yellow River, the country’s second-longest river, to increase water supply for central Henan and Shandong provinces, Zhang said.

Ma’s tactics look increasingly flawed

Monday, Feb 09, 2009, Page 8

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) have started talking about the cross-strait economic relationship in terms of dependence. Ma says the Taiwanese and Chinese economies are interdependent. Chiang has reinforced this by saying that it would not necessarily be a bad thing for Taiwan’s economy to be dependent upon China. Ma is the highest decision-maker for cross-strait policy and Chiang is in charge of the practical implementation of these policies. By echoing each other, they are saying that economic dependence on China has become the centerpiece of government policy.

Economic relations between countries is a normal state of affairs, and close and frequent exchanges between nations is a good thing. However, Taiwan’s degree of trade dependence on China has reached 40 percent, while China’s dependence on Taiwan is 9 percent. This imbalance is an indication of the gravity of Taiwan’s dependence on its larger neighbor. Ma’s talk about mutual dependence is not true, and such asymmetric dependence is all but certain to bring trade or exchange rate friction or conflict.

Ma’s economic policy has focused on China, and the disappointing results of opening Taiwan to Chinese tourism and the direct links are far removed from any earlier predictions, evidence that dependence on China is not a panacea for Taiwan’s economy.

With China still bent on annexing this country, economic independence will translate into social and political dependence. When that happens, Beijing can achieve its goal of unification peacefully by using Hong Kong’s dependence on China as a model.

When Chiang says that economic dependence on China is not a bad thing, he shows that he is blind to the realities of international trade and national security.

A wave of bankruptcies has swept across China in the past year, while the international financial crisis has led to greatly reduced exports. Taiwanese businesspeople are now moving out of the Chinese market in droves, aggravating the problems with foreign capital outflows, factory closures and unemployment in China’s coastal regions.

But even as Taiwanese capital is flowing back into Taiwan, the government is encouraging Taiwanese businesses to go to China. This runs counter to the principles of a free economy, even though there are not many successful examples of governments distorting the economy.

Taiwan’s economic miracle was created by international trade, and Taiwan should once again make the world its market. China is only one small part of that global market, not its mainstay. The Ma administration is neglecting the importance of international markets to gamble Taiwan’s future on China.

In the past, the government made efforts to expand Taiwan’s trade opportunities and avoid international isolation by trying to negotiate free-trade agreements with Japan, the US and other countries and gain entry into the ASEAN plus three. Such efforts appear to have been sidelined by the Ma administration’s interest in a common Chinese market and closer economic cross-strait relations.

Whether we take a theoretical, realistic, national security, sovereignty, or industrial perspective, dependence on China will put Taiwan in immeasurable danger. It is a flawed policy that will only assist China in its attempts to annex Taiwan.

Sino-US military ties in a standoff
　

By Richard Halloran
Monday, Feb 09, 2009, Page 8

Military exchanges between China and the US remain frozen despite a seemingly cordial telephone conversation between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and the forthcoming port call in Hong Kong of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

Said a US officer: “It’s still a work in progress.”

Indeed, China underscored its displeasure with the US with not-so-subtle warnings last week. Two generals signed an essay lauding the increased capability of China’s nuclear forces, including long-range missiles that could strike the US. And a defense academic asserted that China’s White Paper on military forces issued last month marked the limit of China’s willingness to disclose military information.

The US, under several administrations, has sought exchanges with Chinese military leaders to persuade them not to miscalculate US capabilities and intentions. This was forcefully expressed in public in 1999 by Admiral Dennis Blair, then head of the US Pacific Command and now director of national intelligence. He told Congress the message to China was that the US did not intend to “contain” China, but “don’t mess with us.”

More recently, officials of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have urged the Chinese to be more “transparent” in strategy, budgets and procurement of weapons. Said Admiral Timothy Keating, the current Pacific commander: “We’d like a little more transparency in their long-range intentions.”

The commentary by Chen Zhou (陳舟) of China’s Academy of Military Science sought to rebut that.

The present standoff began in October when the Bush administration and Taiwan’s government agreed on a US$6.5 billion sale of arms to Taipei. The sale, if consummated, would include 330 Patriot missiles intended to intercept the 1,400 missiles China aims at Taiwan.

The Chinese immediately protested the arms sale and, as they have in the past when the US displeased them, cut off port visits, exchanges of military students and reciprocal visits by military leaders.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said: “The United States ignored China’s serious stance and strong opposition, and is bent on selling weapons to Taiwan, which has contaminated the positive atmosphere for US-China relations.”

Obama telephoned Hu several days ago, but so far as could be determined from the public record, did not discuss the estranged military relations between the US and China except in convoluted terms. Xinhua news agency reported that Hu said “the core interest of either country should be respected by each other and taken into consideration.”

Since the phrase “core interest” often refers to the Taiwan issue, in which the Chinese insist the US should not interfere, that may have been the closest the two leaders came to the cause of the breakdown in military exchanges. Most of their conversation appears to have centered on the economic crisis.

US officers insisted that the port call to Hong Kong later this month of the USS John C. Stennis, a nuclear powered warship armed with 85 combat aircraft, would not reflect a revival of military exchanges. Evidently Chinese military leaders do not consider a visit to Hong Kong the equivalent of a visit to Shanghai or other ports.

Underscoring the standoff was the essay on nuclear weapons by General Jing Zhiyuan (金濟元), commander of China’s nuclear missile force, and General Peng Xiaofeng (彭曉楓), the political commissar of the force. They asserted that their force had strengthened “strategic deterrence” by being better able to mount intercontinental missile strikes and by creating a versatile missile inventory.

The two generals, breaking China’s usual secrecy about its nuclear forces, said in an authoritative Chinese Communist Party journal that the Second Artillery, the nation’s nuclear force, had expanded over the last three decades to combine nuclear and conventional missiles. They reiterated, Xinhua said, the “resolve of China to maintain its territorial integrity and guard national security.”

In a related commentary carried by Xinhua, Chen said China’s defense white papers have always focused on peaceful development and the pursuit of defensive policies in national security. He argued that the white papers have become increasingly open but have reached their limit.

Richard Halloran, formerly with the New York Times as a foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington, is a freelance writer in Honolulu.