Ronaldo receives rowdy welcome

MADRID: Cristiano Ronaldo received a rapturous welcome from 80,000 Real Madrid fans; an outpouring so exuberant the soccer star had to be hustled away when spectators leaped barriers and took the field.

Ronaldo, who joined the famed club following his record transfer from Manchester United, appeared before the capacity crowd at Santiago Bernabeu stadium wearing the same No. 9 jersey worn by Real Madrid great Alfredo di Stefano.

“I’ve achieved one of my dreams,” a beaming Ronaldo said before leading fans in a cry of “Viva Madrid!” “I want this to begin as quickly as possible so that I can show what I can do.”

Real Madrid had been chasing the world player of the year since 2006. He agreed to a six-year contract in a record $131 million transfer.

Fans had begun lining up outside the stadium since early morning, hoping to glimpse the 24-year-old player. He completed a lap of honor to salute fans after performing a few juggling tricks.

Sri Lanka beat Pak in Galle Test

GALLE: Sri Lanka defeated Pakistan by 50 runs in first Test match here securing 1-0 lead in three matches Test series.

Fans bid Jackson farewell outside memorial service

LOS ANGELES – Michael Jackson fans came from near and far Tuesday to say last goodbyes to their pop music hero, some traveling from across the U.S. and Europe for his public memorial in Los Angeles.

Near the service site in downtown’s Staples Center, vendors sold Jackson memorabilia such as T-shirts, collages, buttons and bouquets of snapdragons and dahlias.

“His music will live forever. That’s why I’m here today. It’s like closure. I’m a person who believes in miracles, and I’m witnessing one today,” said Jenee Huitt of Los Angeles, referring to her gold wristband allowing her to be among the lucky fans to attend the memorial service.

Huitt, an etiquette teacher, said she met the Jackson 5 as a girl in the early 1970s.

“Diana Ross brought the Jacksons in to this event, introduced them and said, `They’re going to be stars,’” Huitt said.

Fans inside Staples Center wept during the many emotional highlights during the service, which included spoken tributes and performances of Jackson tunes.

“I cried, and I was like, I’m not going to cry because I did not know him. But it was very moving,” said Morgan Bryant, 15, of Los Angeles. “By them performing his songs, it made it so real, and seeing the casket there, it made it like he’s really not coming back.”

Bridget Thomsen, 26, of Upland, Calif., said seeing all the stars come together and perform in Jackson’s memory brought tears to her eyes.

“The soul and the heart they put into it was something you could never forget,” Thomsen said.

Bianca Reyes, 41, San Diego, said one of the most moving moments was when Jackson’s daughter, Paris, broke down as she told the audience how much she loved her father.

“This was amazing to be part of history,” Reyes said. “They’re just regular family. It was so sad.”

Crowds were tiny compared to those expected by police, who had issued statements leading up to the service asking people without tickets to stay away.

Deputy Police Chief Sergio Diaz, operations chief for the event, said authorities had projected a crowd of 250,000 or more. Besides reporters and those with tickets to the memorial service, the crowd around the Staples Center perimeter numbered only about 1,000, he said.

“We asked people not to come out and just be on the street and spectate from a distance, and it seems to have worked,” Diaz said.

Police had based their projection of 250,000 people on turnouts for the funerals of Princess Diana and Elvis Presley, along with the recent Los Angeles Lakers NBA championship parade, Diaz said.

Fans drove or flew in from northern California, Colorado and as far away as Arkansas, Delaware and England, some just to be outside the event. Some wore trademark Jackson clothing, including sequined white socks and red leather jackets reminiscent of those the singer wore in his music videos.

The scene was reminiscent of one of Hollywood’s many awards shows, which draw vendors and celebrity gawkers. Police helicopters flew overhead, and officers patrolled on foot and bicycle. The crowds were orderly.

Fans carried signs such as “Michael Jackson Lives.” One turned himself into a walking music video, strapping a flat-screen TV to his back that played Jackson numbers.

Claudia Hernandez, 29, said she loved Jackson’s music as a girl growing up in Mexico. Now a day-care teaching assistant in Los Angeles, Hernandez said she has cried watching TV coverage of his death.

“I’m trying to hold in my emotions,” said Hernandez, wearing a wristband to allow her admittance to the service and holding a framed photograph of Jackson. “I know right now he’s teaching the angels to dance.”

Half a dozen protesters stood among fans, condemning Jackson over his child-molestation charges, holding signs that read, “Jacko in Hell,” “You’re Going to Hell” and “Mourn for Your Sins.”

But Jackson’s devotees far outnumbered his critics. Mishelle Van, 37, drove with her cousin from Hesperia, Calif., arriving in Los Angeles at 1 a.m. They spent the early morning hours with other Jackson fans.

“They’re touching us and saying, can you bring the love in for us?” said Van, who was among those with a wristband for the service.

Melvin Price, 43, flew in from England on Saturday, even before he knew he had won a ticket to the Jackson memorial.

“I wanted to pay my last respects to Michael Jackson,” said Price, dressed in a red leather jacket. “I’ve been a fan of his for 35 years.”

Beverly J. Ellis, 46, said she drove from Holly Springs, Ark., just to be there even though she could not get in. She planned to go to Jackson’s Neverland ranch later in the day to take pictures and see if she could get a rock or other souvenir to take home.

“I’m just a groupie. I’m an old groupie now,” said Ellis, who held an American flag and a sign with a photocopied image of Jackson. “I’m a die-hard, true fan.”

“I adore him. He’s a genius,” said Lorena Gonzalez, 24, a college student who came up for the service with her mother from Monterrey, Mexico.

“Michael was a legend. He had to die young because he was an idol,” said her mother, Elsa Lopez de Gonzalez, 50. “He will be missed but he will live forever.”

Vernay Lewis, 32, flew in from Wilmington, Del., spent all Monday night on the streets outside Staples Center, wrapped in a blanket to stay warm overnight.

Lewis said she did not care that she traveled cross-country even though she did not have a wristband to attend the memorial. She just wanted to be near the singer and his fans.

“I think it was his kind heart, his gentleness, his childlike ways,” said Lewis, who signed a wall for fans to offer farewell sentiments to Jackson. “For me, he was the whole package as far as what an entertainer and what a person was supposed to be. I just think he was wonderful.”

Michael Jackson’s Missing Music: More to Come?

Call it irony, call it the silver lining of a tragic death – Michael Jackson’s passing has put the King of Pop back on top of the music charts. His hits have suddenly become the nostalgic sound track of summer 2009.

And Jackson’s reign could continue for years with fresh material that has never been released and artistic reworkings of existing classic tracks, according to Tommy Mottola, former CEO and chairman of Sony, the company that owns the distribution rights to much of Jackson’s music. “The world will be listening to Michael Jackson for decades to come,” Mottola tells TIME. (See the last photos of Michael Jackson.)

As fans rediscover the great albums, their newfound appetite for Jackson’s music could be further satiated by “dozens” of new albums in various forms, says Mottola. The unreleased material, for example, should be extensive due to Jackson’s prolific recording and legendary perfectionism. In the studio, Jackson “absolutely” over-recorded for all of his iconic albums, says the former Sony head. “Let’s say 12 or 13 songs end up on the album; Michael could have possibly recorded 15, 20 or 30 songs,” says Mottola. “This would probably go for every album he recorded and probably pre-dating [Sony] to his Motown days.” (Read “What Happened to Michael Jackson’s Millions?”)

Jackson was also constantly trying to stretch himself as an artist, working with the latest hot producers to stay current. So with each album there would be a “plethora” of these producers brought in to work on tracks – leading to even more material.

Mottola contends that some of these unreleased tracks, even if they did not make the cut for the original album, could potentially represent Jackson’s “best work.” Says Mottola: “There were so many recordings, and so many of them were great. It doesn’t mean these [unreleased] songs were any less great; it just happened to be the other songs that were picked.” (See pictures of Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.)

This unreleased Jackson material would not even take into account the two albums that Jackson was reportedly working on for his tour at the time of his death. One of them was a classical album, in which he was collaborating with composer David Michael Frank. Jackson “had the tunes pretty much worked out,” Frank told CNN, adding that the album would “show the world that Michael was more than just a songwriter.”

There is also the possibility of new live albums and remixing Jackson’s existing catalog. “That’s five years of material right there,” says Mottola of the remixing. “You can just go on and on and on. It’s endless for years to come.”

Billy Bob’s Daughter Indicted in Babysitting Death

Los Angeles (E! Online) – Amanda Brumfield, the estranged daughter of Billy Bob Thornton, was indicted Wednesday in Florida on murder charges for the 2008 death of a 1-year-old girl Brumfield was babysitting.

The 29-year-old daughter of Thornton and ex-wife Melissa Gatlin is facing counts of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter. Per the Orlando Sentinel, a tearful Brumfield appeared in court accompanied by her lawyer. A judge rejected her request for bail and ordered her held in jail.

Brumfield told investigators the infant, Olivia Garcia, died on Oct. 3 after tumbling head-first out of her playpen. But the medical examiner ruled the fall could not have caused the child’s fractured skull and authorities say Brumfield waited more than two hours before calling paramedics.

In the wake of her arrest last month, the 53-year-old Thornton released a statement through his publicist indicating that he had been estranged from Amanda and had “no contact with her for quite some time.” He also offered condolences to the Garcia family.

High-tension wire falls, protest erupts in Korangi

KARACHI: A high-tension line fell on houses in Karachi area of Korangi, causing the grid stations of Korangi South and East to go defunct on Tuesday night.

At the time of collapse, a wedding ceremony was underway, which turned violent and the angry protesters took resort to pelting stones on Kornagi Grid Station.

The protesters lit fire in front of Kornagi Grid Station.

A KESC vehicle turned up there to set right the snapped wire; however, the protesters pelted them with stones and forced them to leave the scene without fixing the problem.

Jackson fans worldwide say farewell to star online

SAN FRANCISCO: Even before Michael Jackson’s shimmering gold casket made it to downtown Los Angeles for his memorial, millions of his fans worldwide were watching and mourning online.

Messages in an array of languages were fired off to Jackson memorial forums at Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and online haunts where video or news of the event were being shared in an unprecedented interactive global farewell.

Mountains of Jackson memories are posted at an official Sony Music website in tribute to the King of Pop.

“Rest in peace now Michael… I’m glad you went out a record breaker, a hero, and a fantastic performer the world will never be the same without,” said a message signed with the name James Cleave.

“As a kid I used to dance to your music from your ‘Bad’ album on my parents’ LP player and everyone knew me to be one of your biggest fans on the island of Cyprus.”

Michael Jackson won’t fade from limelight soon

LOS ANGELES – The public mourning of Michael Jackson may be done, but the saga that was his personal life is far from over.

Nothing made that more clear than the one surprise of Tuesday’s memorial service, watched by millions around the world: the emotional speech by Jackson’s 11-year-old daughter, Paris-Michael.

“Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father I could imagine,” she said, dissolving into tears and turning into the arms of her aunt Janet. “I just want to say I love him so much.”

Custody of Jackson’s three children is one of the biggest legal issues still unresolved. In his 2002 will, Jackson made his wishes clear — his three children should remain under the care of his mother, Katherine.

Debbie Rowe, the biological mother of Paris and her 12-year-old brother, Prince Michael, has indicated she may seek custody. The surrogate mother of Jackson’s youngest child, 7-year-old Prince Michael II, is unknown. A custody hearing was scheduled for Monday.

As the world paused to remember Jackson, authorities released his death certificate, which did not list a cause of death. The official determination will likely wait until toxicology results are completed, which could be weeks away.

Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said Jackson’s brain, or at least part of it, was still being held by investigators and would be returned to the family for interment once neuropathology tests were completed.

Investigators have honed in on drugs that were administered to the insomniac Jackson. The powerful sedative Diprivan, which is usually administered by anesthesiologists in hospitals, was found in his home, according to a law enforcement official.

Jackson’s final resting place was another unknown. Permission is needed to bury him at his former home, Neverland Ranch.

A private memorial was held at a cemetery in the Hollywood Hills that is the resting place of many stars, but it does not appear Jackson will be buried among them.

No plans have been announced for Neverland, but it’s already drawn comparisons as a potential West Coast version of Graceland.

Then there’s Jackson’s money. He died deeply in debt, but left an estate potentially worth $500 million and his enduring star power with its tremendous earning potential.

Former Sony Music chairman and CEO Tommy Mottola has said Jackson left dozens of songs that included newer material and leftover works from some of his biggest albums. Mottola predicted the potential playlist was bigger than the one left behind by Elvis.

The singer also left behind an elaborate production dubbed “The Dome Project,” which could be Jackson’s last complete video piece. Little is publicly known about the production, but its existence has been confirmed by two knowledgeable sources who spoke to The Associated Press on condition they not be identified because they signed confidentiality agreements.

There also is more than 100 hours of footage of preparations for his London concerts, which were canceled because of his death. Randy Phillips, president and CEO of concert promoter AEG Live, said last week that the company also has enough material for two live albums.

On Tuesday, about 20,000 people gathered inside the Staples Center on Tuesday for a somber, spiritual ceremony, watched by millions more around the world.

Crowds gathered outside Harlem’s Apollo Theater in New York to soak it in. In Santiago, Chile, national police band played “We Are the World” during the traditional guard change at the presidential palace. About 50 fans lit candles and laid flowers in the main square in Stockholm, as “Billie Jean” and “Earth Song” poured out of a small stereo.

In London, dozens of fans sheltered under umbrellas against the rain as they watched the event on a big screen outside the 02 Arena, where Jackson was to have performed 50 comeback shows starting next week. Many more stayed dry at home after the BBC announced it would cancel scheduled programming and show the ceremony live.

“His whole life was a global broadcast in a way, so I suppose it’s fitting that his death also is,” said barista Robert Anderson, 26, in London.

Calculating just how many people in total watched the ceremony — around the world and across all platforms — will take several days and even then will likely have to resort to an approximation, given the huge variety of outlets.

At the ceremony, a star-studded lineup of performers closely linked to Jackson’s life and music remembered Jackson as an unparalleled singer, dancer and humanitarian whose music united people of all backgrounds.

“Don’t focus on the scars, focus on the journey,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose fiery eulogy was one emotional high point of the service.

“There wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with!” he said to Jackson’s three children in the front row, drawing the longest ovation of the service.

Outside, More than 3,000 police officers massed downtown to keep the ticketless at bay. Helicopters followed the golden casket as it was driven over blocked-off freeways from Forest Lawn cemetery to the Staples Center. A bazaar of T-shirts, buttons, photos and other memorabilia sprouted in the blocks around the memorial. Movie theaters played the service live.

Inside, however, the atmosphere was churchlike, assisted by an enormous video image of a stained-glass window with red-gold clouds blowing past that was projected behind the stage.

The Rev. Lucious W. Smith of the Friendship Baptist Church in Pasadena gave the greeting, standing on the same stage where Jackson had been rehearsing for a comeback concert before his death on June 25 at age 50.

The ceremony ended with Jackson’s family on stage, amid a choir singing “Heal the World.”

“All around us are people of different cultures, different religions, different nationalities,” Rev. Smith said as he closed the service. “And yet the music of Michael Jackson brings us together.”

Deficit-ridden Los Angeles asked Jackson fans to help pay the bill for police and other public servants needed for the entertainer’s memorial service.

A Web site was posted Tuesday seeking donations to cover the costs, estimated at between $1.5 million and $4 million, according to Matt Szabo, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

But Jack Kyser, founding economist of the Kyser Center for Economic Research of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, estimates the city could rake in $4 million from the event, thanks to the throng of media and other visitors who stayed at hotels, ate at restaurants and shopped in Los Angeles.

Kyser believes the city also got a major image boost because the memorial service went off without any major problems. “This thing went off very smoothly,” Kyser said. “I think you had some good exposure for downtown and for the entire city.”

Gilani says will put forth govt. stance before SC

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has said the government will present in front of Supreme Court (SC) its stance over levying carbon tax on the prices of petroleum products.

Addressing the reception hosted in honor of journalists here on Tuesday, the Premier Gilani said the government will put forth its stance in front of Supreme Court (SC) in regard to levying carbon tax on petroleum products and following which, whatever ruling the SC declared, will be accepted by government.

“I believe in judicial activism and will be cooperative in abiding by court’s verdicts”, he remarked adding, “We are not escaping accountability”.

Petrol on old prices being sold in Karachi

KARACHI: The petrol is being sold at old prices in many petrol pumps despite governments’ announcement to cut petroleum product prices, Geo news reported.

The petrol price has been slid up to Rs.11 per liter following the SC verdict, which ordered government to suspend carbon tax surcharge on petroleum products, sources said.

Following the SC directions, the OGRA had issued notification dropping carbon tax surcharges on petroleum products leaving the petrol as much as 11 rupees down per liter.

Ashes series to begin today

CARDIFF: The 2009 Ashes series starts in Cardiff today as the battle between two of cricket’s fiercest rivals gets set to rage once again.

Geo Super will telecast all matches of the series live.

The series started way back in 1877 and, of the many memorable series over that long stretch of time, five really stand out. England’s last Ashes victory and what a dramatic success it was.

England had not won the Ashes since 1987 and were always going to be up against it in this series against the world’s top team.

But the hosts emerged triumphant .Andrew Flintoff playing an integral role with bat and ball, winning 2-1 with the other two Tests drawn.

Petrol being sold on old prices across the country

KARACHI: The petrol is being sold at old prices in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and other parts of the country despite governments’ announcement to cut petroleum product prices.

The petrol price has been slid up to Rs.11 per liter following the SC verdict, which ordered government to suspend carbon tax surcharge on petroleum products, sources said.

Following the SC directions, the OGRA had issued notification dropping carbon tax surcharges on petroleum products leaving the petrol as much as 11 rupees down per liter.

The citizens have welcome the cut in petroleum prices but said that petrol pumps still selling petroleum products on old prices.

Chinese president breaks off trip to Italy

BEIJING: China’s President Hu Jintao, on an official visit to Italy for the G8 summit, has decided to return to China due to the situation in Xinjiang where riots have claimed more than 150 lives, local news agency reported early Wednesday.

Hu left for home early Wednesday “due to the situation in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region” the agency reported.

In Rome, the Tang Heng, the first political counsellor at the Chinese embassy in the Italian capital as said Hu decided to curtail his trip “given the worsening of the disorder in Xinjiang.”

The summit opens later Wednesday in the central Italian town of L’Aquila and although China is not a member of the Group of Eight, much of the talks was to include emerging powers including Beijing. State Councillor Dai Bingguo would take part in the summit on Hu’s behalf.

Chinese troops poured into the restive city of Urumqi Wednesday in a massive show of force, but fresh unrest flared as Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs armed themselves with makeshift weapons.

In Urumqi, the capital of the remote northwest Xinjiang region where 156 people died in riots on Sunday, army helicopters circled overhead as thousands of soldiers and riot police filled the city shouting out “protect the people”.

Thousands of riot police wearing helmets and carrying shields lined up on a main road in Urumqi dividing the city centre from a Uighur district, with columns of soldiers behind them.

Bhagwandas report proposes to deregulate HOBC price

ISLAMABAD: The Rana Bhagwandas judicial commissions set up to look into the oil pricing mechanism and soaring trend in the petroleum products issued its report to media.

The commission proposed to design short, middle and long term strategies for oil pricing and deregulation of prices of HOBC, light diesel and JP1 fuel. A committee of oil and energy experts must be formed.

According to commission’s recommendations, PARCO oil refinery should have extended petroleum reservoirs and the prices of HOBC, light diesel and JP1 fuel should be deregulate. The formation of oil and economic experts committee has been proposed to evolve formula for ex-refinery prices.

The reports suggested boost in OGRA and petroleum ministry capacity. The commission report also stated details of gains government and oil companies fetched from petroleum products.

Chaudhry Pervez Elahi elected PML-Q Punjab chief

LAHORE: Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and Chaudhry Zaheeruddin Khan have been elected as PML-Q Punjab’s president and general secretary respectively for third time in row.

The PML-Q party elections were held in Muslim League House here. His son Monis Elahi submitted the nomination paper of Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi whereas Raja Basharat filed Chaudhry Zaheer’s nomination. Both were elected unopposed PML-Q president and general secretary.

Shahid Afridi Wallpapers

US missile attack kills 9 militants in S Waziristan

WANA: Nine militants have been killed and five injured in US drone attack in South Waizirstan on Wednesday.According to reports, US drones fired two missile at suspected hideouts of militants in Karwan Manza area killing eight and injuring five people. The causalities could be mount.

Supreme Court puts carbon tax on hold

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court suspended on Tuesday parliament’s decision to levy carbon surcharge on petroleum products through budgetary action, accepting for hearing a petition by an opposition politician and ordering the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) to withdraw the tax by Wednesday, pending the final decision.

The petition was filed by Pakistan Muslim League-N secretary general Iqbal Zafar Jhagra.

The surcharge was levied in the budget to collect an estimated Rs122 billion in the current financial year by replacing the petroleum development levy (PDL). The budget was passed by the National Assembly with no vote against it.

The order was issued by a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, despite repeated pleas by Attorney General Sardar Latif Khan Khosa that the levy was part of the finance bill approved by parliament while adopting the budget for 2009-10 and earlier endorsed by the cabinet.

‘Such increases are done to run the affairs of the government since public sector development projects have to be funded and allocations for subsidies on wheat and electricity made although the budget is in deficit,’ the attorney general said.

The chief justice observed that the court was only suspending the June 30 notification by Ogra of imposing the surcharge.

The court summoned the environment secretary on Thursday with a summary indicating what proposals his ministry had sent to the government for initiating measures to provide clean atmosphere free of emissions.

‘Prime facie we are of the opinion that there is no immediate necessity for imposing carbon surcharge, the levy of which is subject to certain benefits like provision of an atmosphere free of lead, sulphur and carbon dioxide emissions,’ the chief justice observed.

The court made it clear that the suspension order was temporary and a final decision would be taken after going through a 100-page report submitted by a judicial commission headed by Justice (retd) Rana Bhagwandas.

On a court query, Advocate Raja Saeeduzzaman Zafar, representing Ogra, presented the break-up of all components that comprise the price of different petroleum products.

He said the price of petrol on June 30 was Rs56.21 that included an ex-refinery price of Rs31.91, PDL Rs10.54, sales tax Rs7.75, oil marketing companies margin (OMCM) Rs1.39, dealer’s commission Rs1.74 and inland freight charges of Rs2.88.

On July 1, the price was increased to Rs62.13 comprising ex-refinery price of Rs36.59, carbon surcharge of Rs10, freight charges of Rs3.37, sales tax Rs8.57, OMCM Rs1.6 and dealer’s commission of Rs2.

The price of diesel on June 30 was Rs55.71 comprising ex-refinery price of Rs34.78, PDL Rs8.53, sales tax Rs7.68, dealer’s margin Rs1.5, OMCM Rs1.35 and freight Rs2.22.

On July 1, the price was increased to Rs62.65 with ex-refinery price of Rs40.94, OMCM Rs1.35, carbon surcharge Rs8, dealer’s margin Rs1.5, sales tax Rs8.64 and freight Rs2.22.

The court asked senior counsel Akram Sheikh to present a brief synopsis of the judicial commission’s report on oil price mechanism.

Advocate Mohammad Ikram Chaudhry represented Mr Jhagra and PPP’s Rukhsana Zuberi appeared in person.

The interim order sent the government into a tailspin and sources said it might consider approaching the apex court for a review.

It drew instant appreciation from different quarters with many believing that the withdrawal of the surcharge would translate into reduction in the prices of petrol (up to Rs10 per litre), diesel (Rs8) and kerosene (over Rs6).

After withdrawing the surcharge, the sales tax would also have to be reduced from existing Rs8.57, Rs8 and Rs8.19 on the three products.

Meanwhile, former chief justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, when contacted, rejected a perception that the order amounted to interference in the affairs of parliament. He said the Supreme Court was only seeking to probe whether relevant laws had been adhered to.

‘We should not forget that it is just an interim order and if the court concludes that the laws were followed, it will take its hands back.’

Justice (retd) Wajeehuddin Ahmed said it was the duty of the Supreme Court, being the guardian of the Constitution, to maintain equilibrium between the powers of the government and welfare of people.

Ogra notification of new petroleum prices

ISLAMABAD: Complying with the Supreme Court’s instructions, the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority on Tuesday issued a revised notification of oil prices after the deduction of carbon tax.

The new rates of one litre petrol applicable from Wednesday are Rs50.53 down from Rs62.13 notified on July 1.

The price of one litre of HOBC will be Rs62.54 after reduction of Rs16.24, kerosene has been reduced by Rs6.96 to Rs52.39 per litre and the new price of light diesel oil (LDO) is Rs51.46.

The Ogra has issued letters to oil marketing companies directing them to notify revised diesel (HSD) prices without incorporating the carbon surcharge.

Since the HSD is a deregulated product, oil companies have determined its price at Rs53.37 per litre. The previous diesel price was Rs62.65 per litre.

British Muslims face deadly terrorist attacks

LONDON: British Muslims face deadly ‘spectacular’ terrorist attacks from the extreme right ‘designed to kill people’, fears Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command.

According to a report in the Guardian on Monday, the counter-terrorism unit has moved officers to beef up its monitoring of the extreme right’s potential to stage attacks.

Commander Shaun Sawyer told a meeting of British Muslims concerned about the danger posed to their communities that police were responding to the growing threat.

Mr Sawyer said of the far right: ‘I fear that they will have a spectacular … They will carry out an attack that will lead to a loss of life or injury to a community somewhere. They’re not choosy about which community.’

He said the aim of any attack would be to cause a ‘breakdown in community cohesion’.

Mr Sawyer told the meeting that more of his officers needed to be deployed to try to thwart neo-Nazi-inspired violence.

He said the terrorist threat posed by Al Qaeda remained the unit’s priority, but said of its far-right section: ‘It is a small desk … we need to grow that unit.’

The Guardian quoted sources as saying that while they believed the neo-Nazi terrorist threat had grown, they had no specific intelligence of an attack.

‘There is an increased possibility of violence from the far right. There is a trend,’ said one senior source, adding that the ideology of the violent right was driven by ‘people who don’t like immigration, people who don’t like Islam. We’re seeing a resurgence of anti-Semitism as well’.

Similar warnings about the terror threat of the far right have been issued in America recently.

In April, an internal report drawn up by the US Department of Homeland Security warned of a possible rise in violent rightwing extremist groups fuelled by the recession and hostility over the election of the first black president.

The report said threats from white supremacist and violent anti-government groups had been largely rhetorical so far, but a prolonged economic downturn could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists.

British Muslims have been a particular target of neo-Nazi propaganda, and groups representing them say they have felt increasingly vulnerable after the Al Qaeda attacks on London in July 2005.

Jackson memorial a somber, spiritual celebration

LOS ANGELES: It was not spectacular, extravagant or bizarre. There were songs and tears but little dancing. Instead, Michael Jackson’s memorial was a somber, spiritual ceremony that reached back for the essence of the man.

Singer, dancer, superstar, humanitarian: That was how the some 20,000 people gathered inside the Staples Center arena on Monday, and untold millions watching around the world, remembered Jackson, whose immense talents almost drowned beneath the spectacle of his life and fame.

If there was a shocking moment, it came in the form of Jackson’s daughter, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, who made the first public statement of her 11 years.

‘Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine,’ she said, dissolving into tears and turning to lean on her aunt Janet. ‘And I just wanted to say I love him so much.’

Outside the arena, the celebrity-industrial complex that Jackson helped create ground on. More than 3,000 police officers massed downtown to keep the ticketless at bay.

Helicopters followed the golden casket as it was driven over blocked-off freeways from Forest Lawn cemetery to Staples Center.

A bazaar of T-shirts, buttons, photos and other memorabilia sprouted in the blocks around the memorial.

Movie theaters played the service live and people paused around the world to watch.

Inside, however, the atmosphere was churchlike, assisted by the enormous video image of a stained glass window, with red-gold clouds blowing past, that was projected behind the stage.

The ceremony began with Smokey Robinson reading statements from Jackson’s close friend Diana Ross.

‘Michael was part of the fabric of my life’, and then Nelson Mandela ‘Be strong.’

A lengthy silence of several minutes followed, punctuated only by a steady twinkle of camera flashes.

The thousands of mourners spoke softly to those in neighboring seats or contemplated their private thoughts.

Celebrities made their way to their seats in front of the stage: Kobe Bryant, Spike Lee, Wesley Snipes, Lou Ferrigno, Don King, the Kardashian sisters, Magic Johnson, Brooke Shields, Larry King.

While Jackson was among the most famous faces in the world, today’s megastars were largely absent. Those present mostly reflected some connection to Jackson’s life or work.

Among those conspicuously not in attendance were Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross and Debbie Rowe, Jackson’s ex-wife and the mother of Jackson’s two oldest children.

Many vehicles left Staples in a long motorcade that ended up in a Beverly Hills hotel.

Record producer Jimmy Jam told AP Television that he was headed for a gathering for friends and family, but he won’t give details.

The fans, clutching tickets that 1.6 million people had sought, were a visual representation of Jackson’s life: white, black and everything in between; from Mexico, Japan, Italy or America; wearing fedoras, African headdresses, sequins or surgical masks. Actor Corey Feldman showed up fully costumed as Michael Jackson.

The pre-ceremony stillness was broken by the organ strains of an African-American spiritual.

‘Hallelujah, hallelujah, going to see the King,’ a choir sang. The crowd cheered and rose to its feet.

The Rev. Lucious W. Smith of the Friendship Baptist Church in Pasadena gave the greeting, standing on the same stage where Jackson had been rehearsing for a comeback concert before his death on June 25 at age 50.

Then Mariah Carey sang the opening performance with a rendition of the Jackson 5 ballad ‘I’ll Be There,’ a duet with Trey Lorenz.

Queen Latifah read a special poem composed by Maya Angelou. Lionel Richie sang gospel, ‘Jesus Is Love.’

Berry Gordy remembered the prodigy of young Michael, drawing a standing ovation when he said the title King of Pop would no longer suffice: ‘He is simply the greatest entertainer who ever lived.’

Emotions peaked when civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a fiery eulogy highlighting all the barriers Jackson broke and the troubles he faced.

‘Every time he got knocked down, he got back up,’ Sharpton said, and the applauding crowd again jumped to its feet.

Sharpton rode the moment, building to a crescendo. ‘There wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy,’ he said later, addressing Jackson’s three children in the front row. ‘It was strange what your daddy had to deal with!’

Jubilation erupted, with the longest standing ovation of the day. It seemed as if Sharpton broke through some sort of wall, freeing shouts from the crowd of ‘We love you Michael!’ After he left the stage, chants of ‘Mi-chael! Mi-chael!’ filled the arena. -AP

Sufi Mohammad is history: govt

PESHAWAR: NWFP Minister for Information Mian Iftikhar Hussain has said that Maulana Sufi Mohammad, chief of banned Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-i-Muhammadi, is history and media should not project him.

‘Let Sufi Mohammad be history. His popularity graph has declined and people of Malakand will not trust him anymore,’ the minister said while speaking at a press conference here on Tuesday.

When asked about the release of Sufi Mohammad, Mian Iftikhar said that government had neither arrested him nor knew about his whereabouts. ‘Media should not disturb Sufi as he has become history,’ he remarked.

He said that militants were on the run in Malakand and they were not in a position to establish even contact with each other.

He said that ‘third and second cadres’ of the militants had been eliminated in the violence-hit region while top leadership had disappeared.

‘The government, security forces and people of Pakistan must win this war. Pakistan will suffer if militants win in Malakand,’ he said, adding that people involved in militancy or supporting militant groups would be brought to justice. He denied Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam allegations that its workers had been arrested.

Mr Hussain expressed satisfaction over the situation in Swat, Lower Dir and Buner districts, saying that things were moving in right direction.

He said that civil administration had been restored in the troubled parts and Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti along with his cabinet members had visited affected areas in Malakand region.

Several members of the provincial assembly were still in their constituencies to visit the areas and meet the affected people.

He said that heads of the law enforcement agencies had briefed the chief minister during his visit to the region, adding the provincial government was satisfied with the outcome of the operation.

‘Militancy is now matter of days in Malakand and displaced people will start going back to their homes very soon,’ he said, adding that return of the IDPs was being discussed at a high level meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday.

He said in the light of that meeting provincial government would announce schedule for the return of IDPs. The government, he said, would provide transport and other facilities to the displaced families.

He said that electricity had been restored in different parts of Malakand while main hospital in Mingora city had been functioning. He said that lady doctors and nurses were also sent to the hospital on Tuesday.

He, however, criticised performance of Pakistan Telecommunication Company, saying that PTCL had yet to restore telephone lines in the affected areas.

The minister said that over 66,000 cash cards had been issued to internally displaced persons so far and dysfunctional cards were being activated. He said that World Food Programme would start distribution of food items from Wednesday.

He said that government of Oman had announced $10 million donations for IDPs while $2 million had already been provided to the UNHCR.

India pledges to punish Kabul embassy bombers

NEW DELHI: India on Tuesday kept its pressure on Pakistan by observing the first anniversary of a devastating terrorist attack on its embassy in Kabul and hoping that the plotters, its officials say were Pakistanis, would face justice.

However, in a sombre statement in parliament, Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna did not specifically name any country or even a group for the act.

‘Today is a year since the terrorist attack on our embassy in Kabul in Afghanistan,’ Mr Krishna said in statements to both houses of parliament.

A number of Indian embassy personnel and a large number of Afghan nationals lost their lives in the attack.

‘We recall their sacrifice with a sense of grief as also to reiterate our commitment against terrorism and all those who sponsor and sustain it. Our thoughts are also with all the families who lost their loved ones. No words of condemnation are too strong for the perpetrators and organisers of this attack. They must and will face a reckoning. Justice must be served.’

Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon Menon led a meeting of Indian diplomats to commemorate the dead.

‘We lost several colleagues and an even larger number of Afghan nationals who gave up their precious lives, making the supreme sacrifice in the line of duty. Please join me in a moment’s silence to recall their sacrifice, to honour their memory, and to reiterate our commitment to fight terrorism and all those who sponsor and sustain it.’

It was the second day in a row that India appeared to ignore the temptation to name Pakistan or blame it for acts of terrorism.

The unusual demeanour is thought to indicate its interest in creating a conducive atmosphere for the prime ministerial talks with Pakistan in Egypt on July 16.

On Monday, for example, Mr Krishna said that New Delhi was closely monitoring the case of Jamaatud Dawa chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the prime accused of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

But, he quickly added: ‘I think that it is the internal matter of Pakistan, especially when courts are involved. We do not comment on those developments. But, we are closely monitoring the events in Pakistan.’

This was a departure from the foreign minister’s complaint only recently that India was not officially briefed by Pakistan about the status of the Hafiz Saeed affair.

Pakistan lodged appeals on Monday against a court decision to release Mr Saeed. On June 2, a full bench of the Lahore High Court had ordered his release from house arrest on the basis of a habeas corpus petition.

Suspected US missile strike hits South Waziristan

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: A second US missile strike in as many days targeted Taliban hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal South Waziristan district on Wednesday and casualties were expected, security officials said.

‘There was a US missile strike on a Taliban compound in Karwan Manza area of South Waziristan,’ said a security official in Pakistan’s northwest, adding that the strike by an unmanned drone hit in the early hours of Wednesday.

Another security official said local sources were reporting between eight and 10 people killed, but said that the death toll was yet to be verified.

On Tuesday, a US missile strike pulverised a compound in a South Waziristan stronghold of Pakistani Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, killing 16 foreign and local militants. — AFP

Education: tool for oppression

In its recently released State of Human Rights 2008 report the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has devoted considerable space — the most number of pages — to the education sector in the country.

It is not a coincidence that the most backward, underprivileged and impoverished people who are denied their basic rights also happen to be illiterate and uneducated.

Not that the rights of educated people are not abused in Pakistan given the autocratic dispensation of the state. But the educated have avenues to seek redress. The uneducated don’t and the mere fact that they have been denied education itself proves how vulnerable they are.

The HRCP has been publishing these reports since 1990 without fail and it has drawn public attention to the state of education in Pakistan and its impact on human rights. Although Pakistan’s constitution and all other human rights instruments recognise education as a basic right of every citizen, people are not getting what is their due.

From the information collected mainly from the media and the reports of UN agencies, the HRCP report tells us that Pakistan spends only 2.3 per cent of its GDP on education and 6.5 million children five to nine years of age are out of school with the drop-out rate being a high 50 per cent.

The HRCP’s focus is — and quite rightly so — on the expansion of education and its accessibility to all children in keeping with the education-for-all concept. A state that recognises the right to education of all its citizens also universalises primary education.

The absence of political will is reflected in the limited resources allocated to this sector, the inadequacy of facilities and the failure to formulate an appropriate education policy to provide this basic right to the people of Pakistan. The HRCP has highlighted these deficiencies and its recommendations also attempt to address the issues it has focused on.

There is, however, a vital dimension of education that the HRCP report has failed to note. This is the inequity that characterises education in Pakistan today and that has emerged as a tool of oppression. It promotes the class divide and perpetuates economic disparity in society. The easiest method of subjugating people is to deny them an education.

If that is found to be too brazen, governments adopt the next best method. They deny the people education of good quality and thus marginalise them effectively.

So serious is this problem that Unesco’s Global Monitoring Report for 2009 is titled ‘Overcoming Inequalities’. It observes, ‘The distribution of educational opportunity plays a key role in shaping human development prospects. Unequal opportunities for education are linked to inequalities in income, health and wider life chances.’

Our education system is blatantly a two-tier one. On one side is the state-of-the-art education for children of the privileged elite. On the other is the decaying system that provides no education at all. On which side will one land depends on the accident of birth and inheritance. The fault line lies along the economic divide. Public-sector school education is free but of deplorable quality. Private schools are allowed to charge fees that touch the skies and thus exclude the majority from their fold. And it is the state which connives in perpetuating this barrier.

To further ensure that educational excellence doesn’t touch the poor, our curricula, textbooks, exams and pedagogy are so tailored that a student from a public-sector school can never hope to benefit. Students of the ‘five-star’ educational institutions get the best books and the best teachers while their examinations are conducted from London/Cambridge.

The unkindest cut comes in the form of the language of instruction. After having prevaricated for decades, our educational planners have in their profound wisdom now reached the conclusion that since English is the international language of the day our children must also be taught English. If it was to be taught as a second language one would not have quarrelled with the approach — though inflicting a foreign tongue on the child as the medium of instruction from class one is the worst kind of cruelty he can be subjected to.

How can young children be taught the concepts of mathematics, science or even history and geography in a strange language they cannot even understand? Yet our policymakers insist that English it will be — and right from class one. Obviously the elite’s children benefit for they are familiar with the language which they have heard their parents speak at home.

As a result the poor who cannot understand or speak English — the clever ones memorise it — gain no proficiency in it or in the subject they are being taught. Had their mother tongue been the medium of instruction they would have at least comprehended the subject they were being taught. And had they been taught English as a second language they would have been fluent in it too.

But then they would have been in a position to compete with the children of the rich which is not acceptable to the privileged elite. As Dr Tariq Rahman, the educationist and linguist, says, English is the language of power in Pakistan. And power is not to be shared. It has to be concentrated in the hands of a few. Hence the need to exclude the majority from the system. That is why the language of governance is English. Court documents are in English. Bills and ordinances are in English. Trade and economic activity is documented in English.

Since the poor have not been taught the English language as they should have been, they are denied access to political power. The economic turf, especially the employment market, also has to be kept as the rich man’s preserve. A low standard of education ensures that. By holding on to these two key areas of power, the elite perpetuate the cycle of poverty and disadvantage.

Thus education becomes a tool of oppression for the rich to subjugate the poor. The HRCP should note this as it is the most blatant violation of human rights we are witness to.
zubeidam@gmail.com

Supreme Court puts carbon tax on hold

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court suspended on Tuesday parliament’s decision to levy carbon surcharge on petroleum products through budgetary action, accepting for hearing a petition by an opposition politician and ordering the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) to withdraw the tax by Wednesday, pending the final decision.

The petition was filed by Pakistan Muslim League-N secretary general Iqbal Zafar Jhagra.

The surcharge was levied in the budget to collect an estimated Rs122 billion in the current financial year by replacing the petroleum development levy (PDL). The budget was passed by the National Assembly with no vote against it.

The order was issued by a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, despite repeated pleas by Attorney General Sardar Latif Khan Khosa that the levy was part of the finance bill approved by parliament while adopting the budget for 2009-10 and earlier endorsed by the cabinet.

‘Such increases are done to run the affairs of the government since public sector development projects have to be funded and allocations for subsidies on wheat and electricity made although the budget is in deficit,’ the attorney general said.

The chief justice observed that the court was only suspending the June 30 notification by Ogra of imposing the surcharge.

The court summoned the environment secretary on Thursday with a summary indicating what proposals his ministry had sent to the government for initiating measures to provide clean atmosphere free of emissions.

‘Prime facie we are of the opinion that there is no immediate necessity for imposing carbon surcharge, the levy of which is subject to certain benefits like provision of an atmosphere free of lead, sulphur and carbon dioxide emissions,’ the chief justice observed.

The court made it clear that the suspension order was temporary and a final decision would be taken after going through a 100-page report submitted by a judicial commission headed by Justice (retd) Rana Bhagwandas.

On a court query, Advocate Raja Saeeduzzaman Zafar, representing Ogra, presented the break-up of all components that comprise the price of different petroleum products.

He said the price of petrol on June 30 was Rs56.21 that included an ex-refinery price of Rs31.91, PDL Rs10.54, sales tax Rs7.75, oil marketing companies margin (OMCM) Rs1.39, dealer’s commission Rs1.74 and inland freight charges of Rs2.88.

On July 1, the price was increased to Rs62.13 comprising ex-refinery price of Rs36.59, carbon surcharge of Rs10, freight charges of Rs3.37, sales tax Rs8.57, OMCM Rs1.6 and dealer’s commission of Rs2.

The price of diesel on June 30 was Rs55.71 comprising ex-refinery price of Rs34.78, PDL Rs8.53, sales tax Rs7.68, dealer’s margin Rs1.5, OMCM Rs1.35 and freight Rs2.22.

On July 1, the price was increased to Rs62.65 with ex-refinery price of Rs40.94, OMCM Rs1.35, carbon surcharge Rs8, dealer’s margin Rs1.5, sales tax Rs8.64 and freight Rs2.22.

The court asked senior counsel Akram Sheikh to present a brief synopsis of the judicial commission’s report on oil price mechanism.

Advocate Mohammad Ikram Chaudhry represented Mr Jhagra and PPP’s Rukhsana Zuberi appeared in person.

The interim order sent the government into a tailspin and sources said it might consider approaching the apex court for a review.

It drew instant appreciation from different quarters with many believing that the withdrawal of the surcharge would translate into reduction in the prices of petrol (up to Rs10 per litre), diesel (Rs8) and kerosene (over Rs6).

After withdrawing the surcharge, the sales tax would also have to be reduced from existing Rs8.57, Rs8 and Rs8.19 on the three products.

Meanwhile, former chief justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, when contacted, rejected a perception that the order amounted to interference in the affairs of parliament. He said the Supreme Court was only seeking to probe whether relevant laws had been adhered to.

‘We should not forget that it is just an interim order and if the court concludes that the laws were followed, it will take its hands back.’

Justice (retd) Wajeehuddin Ahmed said it was the duty of the Supreme Court, being the guardian of the Constitution, to maintain equilibrium between the powers of the government and welfare of people.

Sons of Taliban drug addict show Pakistan challenges

PESHAWAR: Motherless boys Sultan and Rahim lived in penury with their drug-addicted father before he abandoned them to join the Pakistani Taliban and an orphanage took pity on them.

Joining the Taliban had seemed a good prospect for their vagabond father, shaking him out of his drug-addled torpor and providing him with an occupation.

But when Pakistan launched its latest offensive against the militia led by Mullah Fazlullah, his sons’ lives fell apart.

They say the Pakistani army killed their older brother, another Taliban fighter, and torched the family home.

And when the army ordered the evacuation of the orphanage that had become their home, the boys joined the two million civilians displaced by war this summer.

The death of his brother has fuelled in Sultan sympathy for hardliners, despite efforts by his benefactor at the orphanage, as part of the battle for hearts and minds here in northwest Pakistan, to teach him to hate the Taliban.

Sultan and Rahim — not their real names — sit on a bed in the school where they and their teachers have sought refuge from the searing heat in this city far from the cool mountains of Swat they were forced to flee.

At 15 years old, Sultan is already the size of a man and his 14-year-old brother — who with his angular face and straight brown hair looks just like him — is not far behind. Their eyes are sad and suspicious.

Sultan does the talking, calmly and politely narrating the tale of their miserable childhood.

‘Our father is a drug addict. Our mother died when we were very young, I don’t know how,’ he told AFP.

Teachers at the orphanage said the boys’ father succumbed to heroin peddled on the streets of Mingora, the main town in Swat, and that he begged for money to pay for his addiction.

Their elder brother, four years older than Sultan, looked after the younger boys.

While many children of drug addicts in Pakistan are themselves condemned to a future of poverty and drugs, the boys’ luck turned when rotund and good-humoured Asif Khan entered their lives.

Appointed by a local charity to work with orphans, he convinced local elders to allow the brothers, then aged five and six, to return with him to the orphanage.

There Sultan and Rahim found a degree of stability, he said, adding that they are ‘very clever, very high in the class’.

In 2007, the boys’ destiny collided with history when the Taliban rose up in Swat demanding Pakistan impose sharia law and their father, along with countless other down-and-outs and their older brother, joined the militants.

The Taliban were initially applauded for dispensing swift justice — punishing criminals and solving legal problems left fallow by a corrupt state. But they governed by fear and terrorised the local population with brutal killings as they tried to impose their harsh interpretation of Islam.

At the orphanage, Khan and his staff did their best to protect their charges from ubiquitous Taliban propaganda but soon the children were idolising the Taliban as heroes, turning plastic bottles into toy Kalashnikovs and pretending to be militant commanders.

Khan said he tried to forbid the games, but added: ‘The Taliban came several times and told me to let them play like Taliban heroes.’

And then in April the onslaught came, as the Pakistani government, under mounting US pressure, launched a full-scale assault in Swat and the surrounding areas of Buner and Lower Dir.

‘My older brother was killed by security forces in Peochar (a Taliban stronghold in Swat),’ Sultan said.

‘Then five days later, they burnt our house’ on the outskirts of Mingora, he said, adding in a murmur: ‘We asked for our brother’s body, but they never gave it.’

Commanders say victory is in sight and have promised that people forced out of their homes by the fighting can soon return.

For his part, Khan is waiting impatiently to continue his teaching and says it is his mission to win back hearts and minds from the Taliban.

‘I will prevent Talibanisation. I will destroy the next Taliban generation,’ he said.

But Sultan seems unable to forget the army killings and when asked if he plans to avenge his brother’s death, he hesitated — his teachers are not far away — before he said: ‘I can’t say anything about it.’ But he does want the troops to leave so life can return to ‘normal’ and openly praises some Taliban members ‘who are on the right path’.

‘They order people to pray. They solve people’s property problems. They arrest drug traffickers,’ he said.

The teenager dreams of becoming a civil engineer and developing his village, but is clear in his belief that the actions of the army are only contributing to grassroots support for the Taliban.

‘When security forces kill a man, the rest of his family supports the Taliban,’ he said.

North Korea’s gone ballistic!

States play with nuclear weapons the way boys play with their toys, writes Naveen Naqvi.

It was a joke someone cracked after North Korea test-fired seven ballistic missiles on July 4, Independence Day in the United States. I have to admit that I laughed at the word play, given my susceptibility to corny humour. Within a split second, though, I felt ashamed of myself and looked around guiltily to see if anyone had heard.

This is not a laughing matter, I thought. Well, actually, it kind of is.

When you think about it, a nation decided to test-fire weapons that are capable of killing millions of people – not to mention mutating future generations (and forget about what it’ll do to old Mother Earth) – in an act of defiance. Much like a rebellious teenager or a spoilt brat. South Korea and Japan called it an ‘act of provocation.’ It’s a bit of a prank, isn’t it? Nothing more than an annoyance?

It seems to me that everything about weapons of mass destruction reeks of a boys-with-their-toys nonchalance and a perverse ‘cute-ification’ (yes, I know that’s not a word). It started in 1945 when the United States dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The code name for the first was ‘Little Boy’ and the second was ‘Fat Man.’ Cute.

I recently read Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel, Broken Verses, and realised how seldom one is reminded of that original and singular display of foot-stomping. Through the book, Shamsie’s protagonist, a Japanese holocaust survivor, keeps asking herself why the Americans would have dropped the second one. Fine, you drop the first and make your point. The second time, it’s just plain stubbornness – ‘You threw sand in my face. I’ll throw not one, but two fistfuls in yours.’

Can we please for a moment remember that we’re not six years old and in the playground?

Let’s bring it closer to home now. On the anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests this year, I talked to Mushahid Hussain Syed, who was the Information Minister in May 1998 while Nawaz Sharif was Prime Minister. Mr Syed arrived on the sets, charged, barely concealing his enthusiasm as he clapped his hands with glee and proclaimed it to be a great day.

He needed little encouragement when I asked for the inside story, and recalled that after the sixth test, he asked Nawaz Sharif, ‘Mian Sahib, but why did you conduct the sixth test?’ He said that Mian Sahib chuckled and said, ‘Well, India tested five so I thought we would test SIX!’ At this retelling, the former minister chuckled to himself while I smiled and said, ‘I have to say that it sounds to me like a game the way you talk about it, Mr Syed.’ ‘No, no. It was a very serious matter,’ he said in response.

India is not that different from Pakistan when it comes to their posturing. The moment there’s any tension, for example, at the slightest sign of conflict that flared in 1999 when Pakistan and India were ‘eyeball to eyeball’, both states can be counted on to live up to the stereotypes and low expectations of us brownies with bombs.

‘The nuclear option cannot be ruled out,’ say heads of state. What that really means is, ‘We can push the button,’ or, ‘No, we can push the button first.’

Recently, I was having a conversation with visiting Indian journalist and anti-nuclear activist, Jatin Desai, when Karamat Ali of PILER said, ‘We’re spending so much money trying to keep these weapons safe when they were meant to make us safe!’ The estimate is up to hundred million dollars from the United States, according to reports that have subsequently been denied. Imagine that same amount of money being spent on development, education and the eradication of poverty, some of the core reasons behind the rise of terrorism in this region.

So, yes, when it comes down to it, the whole nuclear issue is a bit of a joke.

naveen80 Naveen Naqvi is a senior anchor at DawnNews and presents the morning news programme, Breakfast at Dawn. She is currently working on a novel, Guilt, and tweets at twitter.com/naveenaqvi.

Source: Dawn News

Where Will Michael Jackson Be Buried?

In death as in life, there is never a dull moment when it comes to Michael Jackson. Police in California’s Santa Barbara County met on June 30 to discuss how to deal with an expected mad rush of traffic on the narrow hillside road leading to Jackson’s Neverland Ranch for a planned memorial service on July 3. Jackson’s body will arrive there a day earlier, in a 30-car motorcade from Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the singer’s hometown of Gary, Ind., is reportedly seeking to have the body shipped there for another memorial service being planned for July 10. Amid all the competition to pay last respects to the King of Pop (including a memorial service attended by thousands at New York City’s Apollo Theater on June 30), one question still remains unanswered: Where will Michael Jackson be buried?

The singer’s father Joe Jackson denied speculation that Neverland Ranch will be turned into a Graceland-style attraction, with the Gloved One’s grave as the central attraction. “That is not true,” Joe Jackson told reporters when asked whether his son was to be buried at Neverland, which has been owned by a private-equity firm since Michael defaulted on a loan. Although the family patriarch declined to discuss specifics on the time and place of a funeral, citing the second autopsy as a cause for delay, he hinted at grand, Lady Di–scale plans. “I’ve never heard of a private funeral like this — like big, like Michael’s would be,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, the financier whose company owns Neverland is preparing for unprecedented crowds at Friday’s memorial. In an open letter to the Santa Barbara community, Thomas Barrack of Colony Capital on June 30 referred to the ranch as “Michael’s only true home” and added, “The universal curiosity about Neverland and its connection to Michael is an unchangeable fact.”(See TIME’s photo-essay “The Young Michael Jackson at Home.”)

“The future of the Neverland property will be addressed in due time through normal process and with appropriate deliberation,” he continued in a letter that seemed directed as much to the Jackson family as it was to the residents of Santa Barbara County. “Let us all keep in mind that reputations are earned in decades and lost in moments of haste and bad decisions.”

Haste is certainly not characterizing the planning of Jackson’s final farewell. Some outside observers questioned the Jacksons’ rationale for holding off on burial plans while waiting for autopsy results. Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist and an attorney who has handled several high-profile cases, including the second autopsy of Anna Nicole Smith’s son Daniel, says that in the case of a potential drug overdose, the body of the deceased would not be needed for examination once fluid or tissue samples were obtained. Often, the coroner will keep the brain to conduct neuropathology tests, which can’t happen until about two weeks after death, when the brain hardens, says Wecht. It’s also likely that the coroner is conducting further tests on the superstar’s heart, he adds. (See TIME’s top 10 Michael Jackson moments.)

“It’s up to the family. They can bury him and then bury the brain and heart later on,” he says. “But it’s rare for the body to be held back for two weeks.”

In a career that took plenty of strange turns, it’s perhaps no surprise that Jackson’s progress toward a final resting place is beginning to seem just as chaotic. At least one of Michael’s close friends, Mark Lester, the godfather to Jackson’s three children, says he’s in the dark as to the icon’s own final wishes. (Hear TIME’s top 10 Michael Jackson songs.)

“It’s not the sort of thing you sit around a dinner party and discuss,” says Lester, “funeral arrangements for someone so relatively young.”

Michael Jackson 1958 – 2009

Michael Jackson kept his most stunning performance for the very end. Always able to command an audience, he knew how to bring whole arenas to fits of exultation with his moves and then silence them to the point of tears with his poetry. He was brilliant, excessive, maudlin, tacky and possibly criminal, but you could never ignore him. So it was fitting that in death, he momentarily silenced the largest arena humanity has ever known, the Internet.

News of this middle-aged man’s sudden passing nearly broke the Web. Google’s news section malfunctioned under the weight of “Michael Jackson” searches. The volume of Jackson-related tweets reached 5,000 per minute the day he died; Twitter was so overwhelmed that some users couldn’t get into their accounts. Wikipedia buckled temporarily after hundreds of edits were made to Jackson’s page. Across the Internet, more than 24,000 Jackson collectibles were offered for auction or sale. Jackson was crowned the King of Pop back before new media helped crack the monolith of radio pop into innumerable subgenres, from hip-hop and house to praise rock and adult contemporary. But the old-media monarch showed, one last time, that he still reigned: the world stopped for him for a few hours on June 25. (See pictures of people around the world mourning Michael Jackson.)

Not just online. Huge crowds gathered in Hollywood, in Harlem, N.Y., and near the home where he grew up in Gary, Ind. Travelers passing through the Miami airport huddled close around its TVs. Street tributes went up from Paris to Karachi, from Moscow to Mexico City. A candlelight vigil was held in Beijing. In Japan the Defense Minister eulogized him.

The consummate performer, Jackson may well have suspected that his final exit would be a spectacle. The combination of sudden death and pop-cultural universality has triggered global mourning in the past: Elvis, Diana, John Kennedy Jr. Jackson fit the pattern, almost eerily. The day after he died, one of his ex-wives, Lisa Marie Presley, wrote on her blog that Jackson once looked at her intently and said, referring to her father, “I am afraid that I am going to end up like him, the way he did.” Elvis, a heavy prescription-drug user, died in August 1977 after crawling a few feet away from a toilet he had been sitting on. The coroner’s report listed as Elvis’ cause of death coronary arrhythmia; Jackson was rushed to the hospital after suffering cardiac arrest.

In the theater of celebrity tragedy, each play has three acts. The first is confusion. Why did it take hours for someone to find Elvis? Why wasn’t Diana wearing a seat belt in a speeding car? What was J.F.K. Jr. doing flying his own plane? For Jackson, the questions revolve around his health. If he was ill, why didn’t anyone do something about his fragility? What we know is that someone at the Los Angeles mansion he was renting called 911 at 12:21 p.m. that day. “He’s not breathing,” the man said. “He’s not responding to CPR, anything.” He said a physician, identified in news reports as Dr. Conrad Murray, “has been the only one here.” Murray seems to have tried hard to save Jackson — his voice is muffled but frantic in the background of the emergency call — but he kept to himself in the days after Jackson died. The police impounded the car Murray used — not because he is under suspicion, authorities said, but to check for medications that might have played a role in Jackson’s death.

See pictures of the young Michael Jackson in his own backyard.
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1907471,00.html

See the top 10 Michael Jackson moments.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1907249_1907255,00.html

See TIME’s full Michael Jackson coverage.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/michael-jackson

Ice Age vs. Transformers: It’s a Draw!

Action-movie battles rarely end in a tie. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader didn’t go fiercely at it, putting their lives and the fate of the Empire on the line, then stop their epochal fight and say, “Eh, let’s go for a beer.” But the Independence weekend smackdown between last week’s champ Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the cartoon contender Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ended in a tie, with each film earning $42.5 million at the North American box office — if you believe the official numbers.

A distant third, with $26 million for the weekend, was Public Enemies, with Johnny Depp impersonating John Dillinger under Michael Mann’s direction. Somehow, the story of a bank robber who died 75 years ago didn’t seduce the holiday audience. Maybe when the grown-ups have packed their kids off to summer camp, they’ll belatedly discover this rare July movie aimed at adults. In holdover action, the two are-they-gonna-get-married? comedies The Proposal and The Hangover maintained healthy chunks of their audiences and Pixar’s Up, challenged by another 3-D animated feature, finally lost altitude. It also concluded its brief reign as the year’s top-grossing movie; Transformers 2 managed that in 10 days.

For studio bosses who look to this as one of the prime weekends for film attendance, the real behemoth was the calendar. With July 4 falling on a Saturday, one of the two busiest movie days of the week, the box office got clouted by fireworks and barbecues. Each of the top 10 films, which normally would make about the same amount of money on Saturday as on Friday, were down at least 30% last night.

Yet there’s no denying Transformers 2 is a smash, having earned something like $700 million worldwide in 12 days. So far, the movie is ahead of its blockbuster predecessor — though sequels usually come out of the gate with more power than an original, which establishes a brand. Its box-office domination may annoy critics and sentient adults, but this savvily marketed franchise is as impervious to failure as McDonald’s. It’s not a fast-food but a fast-film experience, cunningly mixing the twin fanboy magnets of large marauding toys and luscious Megan Fox.

The performance of Ice Age 3, which over its first five days did outgross Transformers, was a bit spottier. Benefiting from the hiked prices for 3-D showings (which brought in about 40% of the take), the movie still earned less in those five days than 2006’s Ice Age: The Meltdown did in its first three. It didn’t help that Dawn of the Dinosaurs was the summer’s fifth movie whose cast of characters included at least one prehistoric beast. (Can you name the other four?*) It may be time for Hollywood to go back to spacemen.

The movie’s main problem was that many found it an unnecessary addition to the canon, with the primary plot strenuously exerting itself to achieve familiar challenges and triumphs. Only the unrelated, subsidiary scenes with Scrat the squirrel and his foxy new inamorata Scratte showed any comic pizzazz. (These scenes were directed by a different crew.) With the speed of Road Runner, the karma of Wile E. Coyote and, this time, the romantic obsession of Pepé Le Pew, Scrat is a walking, stalking lexicon of characters created by the immortal Chuck Jones. Blue Sky, the Ice Age studio, should take an artistic leap and consider a feature-length, nonverbal Scrat feature.

There’s an even bigger problem in the weekend box-office tallies announced each Sunday around noon Eastern time. They are taken as an accurate summary of an industry’s health, like the Dow average, but they’re grounded less in facts than in wish fulfillment. They take the hard data on the Friday and Saturday grosses, then add each studio’s educated guess as to how its movie is likely to do today. Sometimes those guesses are wrong. A month ago, Up was declared the weekend winner over The Hangover, but the Vegas comedy lured more customers than Warners had expected, and on Monday The Hangover proved to be No. 1.

Making these early results public is like ruling that the team ahead after the sixth inning has won the game, or declaring an election over when the sampling polls come in. So why make these figures public a day before they can be validated? Because Sunday is a slow news day, and the report of the box-office winner, almost always included in the day’s top headlines, is free publicity for the movies cited as being the most popular.

How did Transformers 2 and Ice Age 3 “end” in a tie? Because, after looking at the Friday and Saturday results, Fox execs predicted that Ice Age would earn $14,075,000, a 25% increase over yesterday, while the mentalists over at DreamWorks/Paramount said the Transformers 2 take would rise nearly 30%, to $13,872,000. That oddly precise number guaranteed that both movies would get on the evening news. Skeptics are forgiven for wondering whether the system for determining weekend grosses is numbers-crunching or a numbers racket.

Here are the studios’ official weekend estimates for the top 10 movies, as reported by Box Office Mojo:

1 (tie). Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, $42.5 million; $67.5 million, first five days
1 (tie). Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, $42.5 million; $293.4 million, second week
3. Public Enemies, $26.2 million; $41 million, first five days
4. The Proposal, $12.8 million; $94.2 million, third week
5. The Hangover, $10.4 million; $204 million, fifth week
6. Up, $6.6 million; $264.9 million, sixth week
7. My Sister’s Keeper, $5.3 million; $26 million, second week
8. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, $2.5 million; $58.4 million, fourth week
9 (tie). Year One, $2.1 million; $38.1 million, third week
9 (tie). Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, $2.1 million; $167.8 million, seventh week

* The four other movies with prehistoric beasts: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Up, Land of the Lost and Year One

iPhones aren’t just for grown-ups

ouch-screen technology, so easy a child, even a toddler, can use them.

Parents are discovering that iPhone and iPod Touch applications, or apps, are a handy distraction and an engaging, even educational, way to keep young children busy. (Other handheld devices are getting in the game now, too.)

“It’s been a lifesaver a lot of times,” said Anna Friend of Westwood, Kan.

Life serves up some downtime for her younger son, 6-year-old Brady – waiting at big brother’s activities, at restaurants – and at such times he has enjoyed apps ranging from racing games to math practice. “It’s helped me keep my sanity and kept him busy,” she said.

And many apps are cheap (not counting the cost of the device).

Here are five worth checking out for toddlers and preschoolers.

– “Wheels on the Bus,” 99 cents. Everyone raves about this one. When the wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish in the song, your toddler can make the wipers swish, swish, swish on the screen.

– “Preschool Arcade,” 99 cents. Pinball for counting practice, a claw-crane for shape matching and a rocket ship for letter recognition.

– “Peekaboo Barn,” $1.99. Touch the barn door and learn animal sounds and names, in English and Spanish.

– “Toddler Teasers Quizzing,” $1.99. Correctly touch the letter B, say, or touch the yellow rainbow stripe and the crowd roars.

– “First Words: Animals,” $1.99. Spell the animal pictured on the screen with letter tiles. Skill level is adjustable

Andreessen making leap from entrepreneur to VC

SAN FRANCISCO -

Having built and sold two technology startups for a combined $11.7 billion, Marc Andreessen is ready to take a stab at, well, finding the next Marc Andreessen.

The co-founder of Web browsing pioneer Netscape Communications Corp. and software maker Opsware Inc. is starting a new career as a venture capitalist with his longtime business partner, Ben Horowitz.

Their venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, opens Monday with a $300 million fund earmarked primarily for startups involved in the Internet, software, consumer gadgets and data storage.

Like most venture capitalists, Andreessen and Horowitz are betting they will be able to connect with hard-driving entrepreneurs determined to shake up the status quo.

“We tend to be pro-megalomania,” Andreessen said. “We are big fans of an inexperienced person who has great technology and wants to build a company while staying on as CEO.”

Andreessen, who turns 38 on Thursday, should know the personality type. He shares some of those traits. He helped change the way people used the Internet by developing a graphical Web browser called Mosaic in the early 1990s and went on to co-found Netscape before he had turned 25.

After Netscape was sold to AOL for $10 billion in 1999, Andreessen had the audacity to start Opsware right around the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000. Opsware suffered through some rocky times, but it eventually paid off too when Hewlett-Packard Co. bought the company for $1.7 billion in 2007.

Horowitz, 43, played key roles at both Netscape and Opsware.

Those past successes made it easier for Andreessen and Horowitz to raise money during bleak times for the venture capital industry. With the stock market in turmoil most of the past year, few startups have been able to find buyers or complete initial public offerings. The adverse conditions have made it difficult for venture capitalists to make money from their past investments and discouraged them from financing some new ideas.

Andreessen and Horowitz, though, are unfazed because they believe promising technology faces less competition during recessions.

Their message apparently resonated with the college endowments, wealthy individuals and other funds that are investors in Andreessen and Horowitz’s new firm.

It also helped that Andreessen and Horowitz have done well with their personal investments since they struck it rich at Netscape. They have invested in 45 startups, including the rapidly growing Internet messaging service Twitter Inc. Other companies in their personal portfolio include LinkedIn Corp., an online career-networking site, and Digg Inc., a service that enables people to rate news stories.

While co-managing the new venture capital fund, Andreessen will remain active in Ning Inc., which provides online communities for people with common interests. Andreessen, who has personally invested more than $10 million in Ning, is the company’s chairman, leaving the CEO job to co-founder Gina Bianchini.

As venture capitalists, Andreessen and Horowitz expect to invest anywhere from $300,000 in incubating ideas to $15 million in companies that have been around for a while. They say they will advise entrepreneurs when asked, but won’t make their decisions for them.

“We have done it before so we know a lot about the things that can go wrong” for startups, Horowitz said.

More Than 140 Dead in Clashes in China’s Xinjiang Province

Chinese authorities announced today that some 140 people had been killed and over 800 wounded in protests that roiled Urumqi, the capital of China’s far western Xinjiang province, on Sunday. According to the official news agency Xinhua, Urumqi police chief Liu Yaohua told a press conference that the number of dead was still rising and that there had also been extensive damage to property.

The enormous loss of life marked a bloody milestone in Beijing’s administration of the troubled zone, in which Muslim Uighurs make up the majority of the population. It also presages a severe tightening of the already vise-like grip the authorities maintain on the semiautonomous region, one that could be even harsher than the crackdown that followed the violent suppression of protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in March of 2008. Officials said that several hundred protesters had already been arrested and some 90 more were still being sought on Monday afternoon. “I fear for what is to come,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch. “China has a very poor record of accountability when it comes to those arrested for protesting. In Tibet, for example, there are still hundreds unaccounted for by the government’s own admission.” (See pictures of the March 2008 riots in Tibet.)

Liu told the official news agency that rioters burned 261 motor vehicles and around 200 shops yesterday in violence that was, according to an earlier Xinhua report, “masterminded from overseas by the separatist World Uighur Congress (WUC) led by Rebiya Kadeer.” Sections of the city populated by concentrations of ethnic Uighurs, who make up only around 10% of Urumqi’s population, were reportedly under curfew Monday.

Alim Seytoff, a spokesman for the WUC, a Washington, D.C.-based Uighur exile group founded by Rebiya Kadeer, denied it had had any role organizing the protests. “It is shocking to see the extent of the lethal force the Chinese government used against peaceful, unarmed protesters,” Alim said in a telephone interview. “This is the darkest day in recent Uighur history.”

Alim said the demonstrations were a reaction to a June 26 incident at a factory in Guangdong province, when two Uighur workers were beaten to death by Han Chinese colleagues. “The mob in Guangdong beat and killed Uighurs with immunity,” Alim says. “The security forces didn’t arrest anyone and did absolutely nothing. The protesters were very angry and disappointed.” Alim added that the WUC believed that more than two Uighurs may have died in the Guangdong incident.

China blames ongoing unrest in the far-flung province on separatist groups seeking an independent state of East Turkestan. During the 1980s and early ’90s, Xinjiang experienced a number of bombings and protests, but had been quiet up until the time of the Beijing Olympics in August 2008. In the lead-up to the Games and after, separatist groups allegedly staged several fatal attacks on Chinese security forces. Responsibility for two deadly bus bombings in Shanghai and Yunnan province during the same period, meanwhile, was also claimed by a Uighur separatist group, a claim Beijing denies, calling the incidents accidents. (Read “A China Threat From Pakistan?”)

Dru Galdney, a professor of anthropology at Pomona College in California and author of numerous articles and books on the region, said it was particularly notable that Sunday’s protests took place in Urumqi, where Uighurs make up only a tiny proportion of the population. “Urumqi is the center of Chinese power and influence in Xinjiang and there haven’t been any protest there since the early ’90s, which makes this very, very unusual,” says Galdney. Bequelin of Human Rights Watch concurred, noting that not only is the Uighur population small but that the city was already under very tight control by the security forces, meaning that “such a shockingly high death toll must have meant a complete break own of law and order.”

Urumqi is also home to a number of universities, and students were reportedly well represented among the protesters. According to Alim of WUC, after the street protests had been stopped, Chinese security forces “stormed into Xinjiang University and several other universities, entering the dormitories and arresting students.” He said many students were killed in front of the gates of the university by armed security forces shooting automatic weapons and using armored personnell carriers.

Reaction in China outside of Xinjiang has been muted so far, largely because as is usual with issues considered sensitive by the authorities, major Chinese websites have all removed or shut down readers’ comments — a traditional channel for the Chinese to weigh in on current affairs. On mitbbs.cn, a popular online chat room frequented by overseas Chinese, responses reflect a rush of nationalism. “We must spare no violence to unify our nation,” writes one netizen named “welltwo.” “I support tough military crackdown,” says another. “They [the rioters] deserve no explanation.” Meanwhile, news about information lockdown in Xinjiang has been widely spread and criticized through the microblogging website, Twitter.

Economic factors also probably played a role in the protests, says Gladney of Pomona College, in part because of frustration among the large numbers of young Uighur men who cannot find work, a situation they often blame on the large influx of Han from other parts of China whom they believe are given preferential treatment by both private and government employers. He also believes that the street protests in Tehran and other Iranian cities that followed the recent presidential election may have influenced protesters in Urumqi.

Alim of the WUC denied that either factor lay at the root of the eruption of anger. “The real cause,” he says, “is six decades of heavy-handed repression by the Chinese government in Xinjiang that has reduced Uighurs to second-class citizens in their own homeland. If we speak up we get killed. If we don’t speak up we will be wiped out as a people in a few decades” by Han Chinese immigration and forced assimilation. Bequelin of Human Rights said the feeling of helplessness and desperation conveyed by those words gives a strong indication of the forces driving the Uighur protesters. “You could say they were suicidal,” Bequelin said. “They knew the terrible consequences of protesting for themselves and their families and yet they went out anyway.”

Samsung announces earnings estimate

SEOUL, South Korea -

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s biggest manufacturer of memory chips, announced quarterly earnings estimates for the first time Monday, saying it hopes to reduce market confusion and speculation about its performance.

The Suwon, South Korea-based corporation said it expects consolidated sales of between 31 trillion won ($24.46 billion) and 33 trillion won for the three months through June. That’s up from 29.1 trillion won in sales a year earlier.

The company, which is also the second-largest maker of mobile phones, estimated operating profit would come it at between 2.2 trillion won and 2.6 trillion won, compared with 2.4 trillion won last year.

Samsung gave no explanation for the expected performance, though investors reacted positively. Samsung’s shares rose 5.5 percent to close at 634,000 won. The results are scheduled to be released July 24.

The forecasts include the performance of its overseas and domestic subsidiaries excluding financial business, said Samsung spokeswoman Hwang Eun-ju.

The company does not release a quarterly consolidated net profit figure, however, and so issued no estimate for that. Samsung’s announcement also included no estimates for its earnings on a parent basis, which include net profit.

Last year, Samsung reported consolidated net profit of 5.89 trillion, down about 26 percent from 2007’s 7.92 trillion won.

The manufacturer said it plans to continue providing earnings estimates within several days following the end of each quarter.

“Samsung believes that growing interest in the company’s quarterly earnings and competing forecasts have led to more confusion in the market ahead of the recent earnings release announcements,” the company said.

It also hopes the move will “help enhance company transparency and provide investors with a more accurate expectation of the earnings.”

In the first quarter, Samsung’s net profit on a parent basis tumbled 72 percent to 619.20 billion won, while sales rose 8.5 percent to 18.57 trillion won.

US admiral denounces NKorea’s missile launches

SEOUL, South Korea – The chief of U.S. Naval operations denounced North Korea on Monday for a volley of weekend missile tests, as South Korea said the launches showed the communist regime has improved its missile accuracy.

“They were very unhelpful and clearly counter to the desires of the international community for a peaceful and stable region,” said Adm. Gary Roughead, referring to Pyongyang’s firing of seven ballistic missiles Saturday.

The tests — banned under U.N. resolutions — were Pyongyang’s biggest display of missile firepower in three years and added fuel to tensions already running high after the North’s May 25 atomic test blast.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the North’s missiles improved in accuracy because they landed in the same area.

Seoul’s newspaper Chosun Ilbo also reported three of the seven missiles were a new type of Scud rocket that has greater range and accuracy than previous Scud series. The paper said the Scud-ER missile has a range of up to 620 miles (1,000 kilometers).

The new missile represents a fresh threat to Japan. Tokyo is about 720 miles (1,160 kilometers) from the base on North Korea’s east coast from where the missiles were fired. Some other parts of Japan are closer, well within the range of a Scud-ER.

Experts say ballistic missiles are not generally designed for precision strikes like cruise missiles and are more aimed at inflicting damage in an area they land in.

“What’s important is their chemical weapons,” said Kim Jin-moo, an analyst at Seoul’s state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. “If they (Scud missies) are tipped with chemical weapons, those become a big threat.”

If North Korea fires Scud-B and Scud-C missiles at designated South Korean targets, they should land within 0.6 (one kilometer) and 1.2 miles (two kilometers) of the site, respectively, he said.

Scuds are single stage, liquid-fueled missiles, originally developed in the former Soviet Union, and generally known for poor accuracy. Ballistic missile programs in Pakistan and Iran were built on Scud technology.

North Korea has long-range missiles as well. The Taepodong-2 has a potential range of more than 4,100 miles (6,700 kilometers), putting Alaska within striking distance. It is believed to be developing a missile with an even longer range that could potentially put the U.S. west coast and Hawaii within striking distance.

The launches on July 4 — the U.S. Independence Day holiday — also appeared to be a poke at Washington as it moves to enforce U.N. as well as its own sanctions against the isolated regime for its May 25 nuclear test.

The North has engaged in a series of acts this year widely seen as provocative. It fired a long-range rocket it said was a satellite in early April, and in late May it carried out its second underground nuclear test following the first in late 2006.

The U.N. Security Council punished Pyongyang with tough sanctions centered on clamping down on North Korea’s alleged trading of banned arms and weapons-related material.

The U.S. has been monitoring a North Korean freighter because of suspicions it may be carrying illegal weapons, possibly to Myanmar. The ship, however, turned around a week ago without stopping at any port and headed toward home.

Won Tae-je, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said the Kang Nam 1 was expected to arrived in the North later Monday.

Separately, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman pledged to work with the U.S. to block North Korea from using the Southeast Asian nation’s banks for any weapons deals.

The assurance came as U.S. envoy Philip Goldberg, in charge of coordinating the implementation of sanctions against Pyongyang, met with Malaysian officials in Kuala Lumpur.

South Korean media have reported that North Korea sought payment through a bank in Malaysia for a suspected shipment of weapons to Myanmar.

In Seoul, the chief nuclear negotiators from South Korea and Japan discussed how to implement a U.N. sanctions resolution against Pyongyang and other issues, Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said without elaborating.

___

Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Julia Zappei in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.

From Haiti, a surprise: good news about AIDS

BLANCHARD, Haiti – When Micheline Leon was diagnosed with HIV, her parents told her they would fit her for a coffin.

Fifteen years later, she walks around her two-room concrete house on Haiti’s central plateau, watching her four children play under the plantain trees. She looks healthy, her belly amply filling a gray, secondhand T-shirt. Her three sons and one daughter were born after she was diagnosed. None has the virus.

“I’m not sick,” she explained patiently on a recent afternoon. “People call me sick but I’m not. I’m infected.”

In many ways the 35-year-old mother’s story is Haiti’s too. In the early 1980s, when the strange and terrifying disease showed up in the U.S. among migrants who had escaped Haiti’s dictatorship, experts thought it could wipe out a third of the country’s population.

Instead, Haiti’s HIV infection rate stayed in the single digits, then plummeted.

In a wide range of interviews with doctors, patients, public health experts and others, The Associated Press found that Haiti’s success in the face of chronic political and social turmoil came because organizations cooperated and tailored programs to the country’s specific challenges.

Much of the credit went to two pioneering nonprofit groups, Boston-based Partners in Health and Port-au-Prince’s GHESKIO, widely considered to be the world’s oldest AIDS clinic.

“The Haitian AIDS community feels like they’re out in front of everyone else on this, and pretty much they are,” said Judith Timyan, senior HIV/AIDS adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Haiti. “They really do some of the best work in the world.”

Researchers say the number of suffers was initially lessened by closing private blood banks, and statistically by high mortality rates — an untreated AIDS sufferer in Haiti lives eight fewer years than an untreated American.

Well-coordinated use of AIDS drugs, education and behavioral changes such as increased condom use have kept the disease from surging back, at least for now.

Statistics are notoriously unreliable in this country of poverty and lack of infrastructure. The most telling data would be the number of new infections in a given year, but researchers say such a precise count is impossible.

Next best is to estimate the infected as a percentage of the population. From 1993 to 2003, only pregnant women were tested, and their rate of infection dropped from 6.2 percent to 3.1 percent, according to GHESKIO and national health surveys.

Researchers now test men and women aged 15 to 49, and the official rate is 2.2 percent, according to UNAIDS.

That’s still far higher than in the developed world, but it’s lower than the Bahamas, Guyana and Suriname, and much lower than sub-Saharan Africa, where the rate averages about 5 percent but spikes to 24 percent in Botswana and 33 percent in Swaziland.

But the crisis is far from over. In the Artibonite Valley, where Boston-based Partners in Health is just now setting up two clinics, the estimated infection rate is 4.5 percent.

Some in these remote regions still look for care from Voodoo priests, who ask for large sums of money or goods and use treatments doctors say can be poisonous.

Thanks in large part to UNAIDS, which awarded Haiti its first grant in 2002, and $420 million from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, an estimated 18,000 people are on AIDS drugs, most of them administered free through GHESKIO and PIH.

That population represents 40 percent of those whose white blood cell count is low enough for them to need the drugs. It is a high percentage for the developing world, but still fails to help many too remote to reach medical care or those at for-pay public clinics.

Still, Haiti has been sufficiently ahead in prevention, diagnosis and treatment for some of its programs to serve as models for PEPFAR, the program launched by President George W. Bush in 2003 and praised for its work in Africa.

GHESKIO co-founder Dr. Jean W. Pape was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his work, and PIH’s Paul Farmer was recently named chairman of Harvard Medical School’s global health department. In May, Haiti was honored as the host of the opening ceremony of the 2009 International AIDS Candlelight Memorial.

In a country suffering from political upheaval and natural disasters, where three-quarters of the people can neither afford nor access private clinics or fee-based public hospitals, few could have imagined at the dawn of the AIDS crisis how far Haiti would come.

When some of the first confirmed cases of the strange new immune deficiency disease were found in Haitian migrants, the country was hastily and unscientifically pegged as the main breeding ground, or maybe even cause, of AIDS. Experts predicted a third or more of its population would be wiped out.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control deeply offended the country by listing Haitian nationality alongside hemophilia, homosexuality and heroin use as primary risk factors — nicknamed “the four H’s.” There was speculation that slum squalor or Voodoo ceremonies were responsible for the scourge.

By the mid-1980s the CDC’s risk-factor list was amended, but the damage was done to Haiti’s dignity and to tourism, then its second-largest industry, which collapsed and never recovered.

Yet the stigma may be what motivated Haiti to fight the disease harder, uniting squabbling officials and divided donors in a common cause, said Pape, the Haitian-born, Cornell-educated physician who helped found GHESKIO in May 1982.

GHESKIO was founded two months before the disease even had a name, hence its unwieldy French acronym for “Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections.”

Speaking in an office filled with health studies and signed photos from U.S. presidents, Pape said efforts to close unregulated blood banks, treat the sick and reducing mother-to-child transmissions helped curb the epidemic.

Partners in Health was founded in 1983, by two Haitians and two Americans including Farmer, as a small clinic treating infected people in the desperately poor hillside community of Cange.

Its “accompagnateur” program, in which local workers including HIV patients are paid to help the newly diagnosed adhere to physically taxing medication regimens and prevention measures, has been duplicated in Africa. So has GHESKIO’s work, such as distributing phone cards to patients to keep in closer touch with their doctors.

Obner Saint-Valain is an accompagnateur who looks over seven patients including Marie-Lourdes Pierre, a blind 55-year-old Blanchard woman who has lived with the virus since 1999. For that work he is paid $54 a month.

“If you’re giving medication to a patient, you can’t be scared of them. If the patient becomes worse, it’s me that picks them up and puts them in a car to the hospital,” he said.

While many of Haiti’s more than 9 million people cannot afford care in hospitals that require them to provide everything from medicine to latex gloves for their doctors, HIV patients get cutting-edge treatments for free.

Meanwhile, education campaigns spread the word on prevention measures. More than 51 million free condoms have been shipped to the country of since 2004 and are advertised everywhere on street murals and corner store signs.

“More Haitians know about modes of transmission than high school students in the U.S.,” Pape said.

It was in 1994 that Micheline Leon made the 30-kilometer (20-mile) trek from her home in Blanchard over crumbling roads to the stone-walled campus of Zanmi Lasante, the Creole name and flagship operation of Partners in Health.

Something felt wrong with her pregnancy — the baby was too low in her belly, she said. The baby was fine, but Leon tested positive in the HIV test given to all expectant mothers.

“My family lost hope. They thought I was already gone,” she said.

Through care, counseling and a lot of social assistance — Partners in Health also helped build her tin-roofed, concrete house — Leon survived. She is also a paid PIH accompagnateur, working mostly with tuberculosis patients.

Treatments, which in her later pregnancies included AIDS drugs, prevented the virus from passing to her children, and she was discouraged from breast-feeding. PIH stands by the practice though some AIDS doctors say that’s unwise in countries like Haiti where food is scarce.

Pape envisions a Haiti where the prevalence rate will dip below 1 percent. Timyan of USAID believes the rate has essentially stabilized but will not rise again.

Leon’s parents never did buy that coffin. For her, fear and shame have been replaced with pride and confidence.

“I’m not scared anymore,” she said.

Honduras slides toward greater instability

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Already volatile Honduras slid toward greater instability after soldiers blocked an airport runway to keep ousted President Manuel Zelaya from returning, and protests that had remained largely peaceful yielded their first death.

Police and soldiers blanketed the streets of the capital overnight Monday — enforcing a sunset-to-sunrise curfew with batons and metal poles.

The extended curfew added to the tension after a turbulent Sunday that saw soldiers clash with thousands of Zelaya backers who massed at the airport in hopes of welcoming home their deposed leader.

Zelaya’s plane, on loan from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, arrived to find the runway blocked by military vehicles and soldiers under the command of the government that has ruled this Central American country since Zelaya’s ouster last weekend.

His Venezuelan pilots circled around the airport and decided not to risk a crash.

Zelaya instead headed for El Salvador, and vowed to try again Monday or Tuesday in his high-stakes effort to return to power in a country where all branches of government have lined up against him.

“I call on the Armed Forces of Honduras to lower their rifles,” he said late Sunday at a news conference, flanked by the presidents of El Salvador, Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador, and the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, who flew there from Washington.

“I am risking myself personally to resolve the problems without violence,” said Zelaya, who planned to fly later to Nicaragua. He urged the United Nations, the OAS, the United States and European countries to “do something with this repressive regime.”

Insulza said he “is open to continuing all appropriate diplomatic overtures to obtain our objective.”

But interim Honduran President Roberto Micheletti said he won’t negotiate until “things return to normal.”

“We will be here until the country calms down,” Micheletti said. “We are the authentic representatives of the people.”

Clashes broke out Sunday afternoon between police and soldiers and the huge crowd of Zelaya supporters surrounding Tegucigalpa’s international airport. At least one man was killed — shot in the head from inside the airport as people tried to break through a security fence, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene. At least 30 people were treated for injuries, the Red Cross said, after security forces fired warning shots and tear gas.

When Zelaya’s plane was turned away, his supporters began chanting “We want blue helmets!” — a reference to U.N. peacekeepers.

Karin Antunez, 27, was in tears.

“We’re scared. We feel sad because these coup soldiers won’t let Mel return, but we’re not going to back down,” she said. “We’re the people and we’re going to keep marching so that our president comes home.”

Zelaya won wide international support after his ouster, but several presidents who originally were to accompany him decided it was too dangerous to fly on Zelaya’s plane, which carried only his close advisers and staff, two journalists from the Venezuela-based network Telesur and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister.

Honduras’ new government has vowed to arrest Zelaya for 18 alleged criminal acts including treason and failing to implement more than 80 laws approved by Congress since taking office in 2006. Zelaya also refused to comply with a Supreme Court ruling against his planned referendum on whether to hold an assembly to consider changing the constitution.

Critics feared Zelaya might try to extend his rule and cement presidential power in ways similar to what his ally Chavez has done in Venezuela — though Zelaya denied that.

But instead of prosecuting him or trying to defeat him at the ballot box, masked soldiers flew the president out of the country at gunpoint, and Congress installed Micheletti in his place.

The military solution drew international condemnation, and Honduras was suspended by the OAS. Many called the coup a huge step backward for democracy, and no nation has recognized the new government. President Barack Obama has united with Chavez and conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in insisting on Zelaya’s return.

Speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the State Department, senior U.S. officials said the United States and other OAS member countries are coordinating contacts to facilitate a resolution, despite their insistence on having no formal relations with the interim government.

Without OAS membership, Honduras faces trade sanctions and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidized oil, aid and loans for the impoverished nation.

Moments after Zelaya’s plane was turned away, trucks filled with police ordered everyone off the streets.

“This is a war,” said Matias Sauceda, 65, a human rights activist. “Imagine — things are so bad, that the president is in the air and they don’t let him land.”

___

Weissert reported from Tegucigalpa and Valdivieso from San Salvador, El Salvador. Associated Press writers Freddy Cuevas, Marcos Aleman and Esteban Felix in Tegucigalpa and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

China says 140 killed in riots in west

URUMQI, China – Violent street battles killed at least 140 people and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit China’s volatile western Xinjiang region in decades, and officials said Monday the death toll was expected to rise.

Security forces have clamped down on the city of Urumqi and set up checkpoints to catch any fleeing rioters, state media reported, after tensions between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China’s Han majority erupted into riots.

Rioters on Sunday overturned barricades, attacking vehicles and houses, and clashed violently with police, according to media and witness accounts. State television aired footage showing protesters attacking and kicking people on the ground. Other people, who appeared to be Han Chinese, sat dazed with blood pouring down their faces.

There was little immediate explanation for how so many people died. The government blamed Uighur exiles for stoking the unrest. Exile groups said the violence started only after police began violently cracking down on a peaceful protest.

About 1,000 to 3,000 people had gathered Sunday in the regional capital for the protest that apparently spun out of control. Accounts differed over what happened, but the violence seemed to have started when the crowd of protesters refused to disperse.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported hundreds of people were arrested. Mobile phone service provided by at least one company was cut Monday to stop people from organizing further action in Xinjiang.

The demonstrators had been demanding justice for two Uighurs killed last month during a fight with Han Chinese co-workers at a factory in southern China.

Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang, China’s vast Central Asian buffer province, where militant Uighurs have waged a sporadic, violent separatist campaign.

Uighurs make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but not in the capital of Urumqi, which has attracted large numbers of Han Chinese migrants. The city of 2.3 million is now about overwhelmingly Chinese — a source of frustration for native Uighurs.

Wu Nong, director of the news office of the Xinjiang provincial government, said more than 260 vehicles were attacked or set on fire in Sunday’s unrest and 203 houses were damaged. She said 140 people were killed and 828 injured in the violence.

She did not say how many of the victims were Han or Uighurs.

Xinhua quoted regional Police Chief Liu Yaohua as saying several hundred people had been arrested in connection with the riot and police were searching for about 90 other “key suspects.” He said checkpoints had been set up in the city and in neighboring Changji and Turpan prefectures to prevent the rioters from fleeing. Liu also said the death toll was expected to rise.

Uighur exiles condemned the crackdown.

“We are extremely saddened by the heavy-handed use of force by the Chinese security forces against the peaceful demonstrators,” said Alim Seytoff, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Uyghur American Association.

“We ask the international community to condemn China’s killing of innocent Uighurs. This is a very dark day in the history of the Uighur people,” he said.

The association, led by a former prominent Xinjiang businesswoman now living in America, Rebiya Kadeer, estimated that 1,000 to 3,000 people took part in the protest.

Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said in a televised address early Monday that Uighur exiles led by Kadeer of caused the violence, saying, “Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on July 5 in order to incite, and Web sites … were used to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda.”

A government statement quoted by Xinhua said the violence was “a pre-empted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country.”

Seytoff dimissed the accusations. “It’s common practice for the Chinese government to accuse Ms. Kadeer for any unrest” in Xinjiang, he said.

The clashes Sunday in Urumqi echoed last year’s unrest in Tibet, when a peaceful demonstration by monks in the capital of Lhasa erupted into riots that spread to surrounding areas, leaving at least 22 dead. The Chinese government accused Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of orchestrating the violence — a charge he denied.

Many Uighurs yearn for independence for Xinjiang, a sprawling region rich in minerals and oil that borders eight Central Asian nations. Critics say the millions of Han Chinese who have settled here in recent years are gradually squeezing the Turkic people out of their homeland.

But many Chinese believe the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) are backward and ungrateful for the economic development the Chinese have brought to the poor region.

Adam Grode, an American Fulbright scholar studying in Urumqi, described a heavy police and military presence in the city Monday.

“There are soldiers everywhere, police are at all the corners. Traffic has completely stopped but people are walking on the sidewalks,” Grode said.

He said authorities took him to the police station Monday morning after seeing him taking photographs from his apartment window. They deleted his photos, confiscated his passport and released him. They gave no reason for taking his passport but said it would be returned Tuesday.

Seytoff said he had heard from two sources that at least two dozen people had been killed by gunfire or crushed by armored police vehicles just outside Xinjiang University.

Wang Kui, an official with the Foreign Affairs Department at the university, said she aware of no such incident. She said no students from the university were among those killed or injured.

“We are not allowing students to come and go because the situation is chaotic at the moment,” Wang said. “All the students are at school, and we are taking care of them. But we are not clear about what’s been going on outside.”

China Mobile phone service was suspended in the region “to help keep the peace and prevent the incident from spreading further,” a customer service representative in Urumqi said. The woman would give only her surname, Yang.

Previous mass protests quelled by armed forces became signal events for Xinjiang’s separatist movement. In 1990, about 200 Uighurs shouting for holy war protested through Baren, a town near the Afghan border, resulting in violence that left at least two dozen people dead.

In 1997, amid a wave of bombings and assassinations, a protest by several hundred Uighurs in the city of Yining against religious restrictions turned into an anti-Chinese uprising that left at least 10 dead.

In both cases pro-independence groups said the death tolls were several times higher, and the government never conducted a public investigation into the events.

Obama’s diplomacy being tested in Russia

MOSCOW – President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are launching two days of high-stakes meetings expressing confidence that they can make progress.

Obama and his Russian counterpart sat down Monday in an ornate room of the Kremlin to start the first full-scale U.S.-Russia summit since the early part of the George W. Bush presidency.

Opening their talks, Obama told reporters that “the United States and Russia have more in common than they have differences.” Medvedev said the two leaders will be “closing some of the pages of the past and opening some of the pages of the future.”

Just before the meetings began, the two countries announced a few minor side agreements aimed at showing results.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

MOSCOW (AP) — President Barack Obama opened his first Moscow summit on Monday, meetings sure to test his diplomatic skills like no others but already set to deliver tangible progress on important priorities such as nuclear arsenal reductions and help for the fight in Afghanistan.

Obama’s distinctive Air Force One jetliner touched down with drizzly gray skies blanketing Moscow. He continued down a formal reception line on the airport tarmac, introducing his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters to the Russian officials waiting to greet them.

The entourage then headed directly to a wreath-laying ceremony at Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, brilliant sun breaking over the city’s center through the days of clouds as they drove in. The president walked slowly behind three high-stepping Russian soldiers, then straightened the wreath’s ribbon where they placed it in front of the eternal flame and stood alone briefly.

From there, Obama was meeting at the Kremlin with President Dmitry Medvedev, a full-scale, two-day U.S.-Russia summit that is the first of its kind since the early part of the George W. Bush presidency.

It presents a test for Obama, with Russia home to a wary public, a two-headed leadership and lingering hard feelings. What much of the world will watch are signs of Obama’s relationship with Russia’s two leaders, Medvedev and his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The foundation set now could affect how much cooperation Obama gets in areas in which the U.S. needs help from Russia — chiefly pressuring Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, but also in tackling terrorism, global warming and the economy.

Both sides are talking of improving their ties and wanting to show some early results.

Agreements negotiated before Obama showed up with give him something to take home, including another step toward the world’s two largest nuclear powers reducing their arsenals. Also, the White House announced Monday that the two nations are establishing a joint commission to try to account for missing service members of both countries dating back to World War II. Four working groups will look into missing military personnel from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War and Soviet military personnel still missing from Moscow’s 10-year occupation of Afghanistan.

“At the moment I think we are all moderately optimistic, both the Russian side and the American side, so far as I know,” Medvedev said ahead of Obama’s arrival in an interview with Italian news outlets. “I have heard what my colleague President Obama has been saying. And so we are very much looking forward to the visit of the president of the United States.”

Obama has been saying the United States needs to reset its relationship with Russia. As he told a Russian-language news channel in the days before the summit: “America respects Russia. We want to build relations where we deal as equals.”

Yet he also caused a stir in Russia by telling The Associated Press last week that Putin has to learn that “the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated.” That only elevated the stakes of Obama’s first meeting with Putin, which is set for Tuesday.

Russia and the United States have been allies and adversaries. Obama inherited more of the latter, with relations having tanked in 2008 over Russia’s war with neighboring Georgia.

Obama got off to a solid start, though, with Medvedev during an April meeting in London.

The summit starts a weeklong trip for Obama that also features G-8 meetings and a visit with the pope in Italy, and a speech in Ghana.

Obama’s mission in Moscow is two-pronged, divided over two days. Building ties and inking security and cultural deals with the leadership comes first. He will also devote a prominent amount of time to leaders of Russia’s civil society to help those relationships, too.

There is plenty of room for improvement. Obama, who has enjoyed adoring crowds in travels across Europe so far, will face a skeptical Russian population, polling out Sunday shows.

Only 23 percent of Russians have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in international affairs, according to the University of Maryland’s WorldPublicOpinion.org. Just 15 percent of the Russians polled said the U.S. is playing a positive role in the world; most said the United States abuses it power and makes Russia do what the U.S. wants.

“I would like there to be real change, not just talk,” said Valentina Titova, a 60-year-old retired economist strolling not far from the Kremlin. “I would like to see American meddle less in other countries. They think they’re so superior to others, they put themselves on a pedestal.”

Aiming to change attitudes, Obama will outline his vision for U.S.-Russian relations at a speech at the New Economic School. It is unclear how many people will see it. Russian leaders control the television outlets.

The dominant theme of the summit is security, and Obama and Medvedev are set to announce progress toward renewing a strategic arms reduction pact that expires in December. The eventual deal could cut warheads from more than 2,000 each to as low as 1,500 apiece.

Russia is also agreeing to let the United States use its territory and air space to move arms into Afghanistan for the forces fighting extremists there. That deal, a big breakthrough for Obama in dealing with a widening war, was announced before Obama’s arrival.

The two sides remain in a stalemate over the U.S. pursuit of a missile-defense system in Europe. Obama’s administration is reviewing the efficacy of plan, which Bush had pushed hard.

U.S. leaders have expressed hope of getting Russian cooperation on missile defense. But both sides have also shown signs of hardening their positions ahead of the summit.

The basic problem is unchanged: The U.S. contends the program is designed to protect U.S. allies in Europe from a potential nuclear attack by Iran, but the Russians see it as a first step toward a system that could weaken their offensive nuclear strike potential.

“We’re going to have to work our way through that,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told “Fox News Sunday.”