Fair Proxy Web

Lawyer: Mother of dead Goa teen given protection

PANAJI, India (AP) — The mother of a British teenager who was allegedly raped and murdered on a beach in southern India has been provided with an armed escort, police said Monday.

Scarlett Keeling’s bruised and partially clothed body was found February 18 on Anjuna beach in Goa, a tiny state whose coastline is crowded with tourist resorts.

A post-mortem examination last week showed that she tested positive for drugs like cocaine and morphine.

Keeling’s mother Fiona MacKeown has been provided armed security at an undisclosed location within the state since Monday evening,a senior local police officer Bosco George said.

He gave no other details.

MacKeown’s lawyer Vikram Verma told reporters that she had faced considerable security risks and had asked for the protection.
found here.

Tibetans slam Olympic ‘flame of shame’

OLYMPIA, Greece (CNN) — Three human rights protesters marred the Olympic torch lighting ceremony Monday, charging onto the field of an ancient Greek stadium to unfurl a banner calling for a boycott to the Beijing Summer Games.

The brief disruption unnerved thousands of spectators, dignitaries and Olympic officials who packed into the sprawling ancient stadium to watch actresses posing as priestesses light the Olympic flame from the sun’s rays.

Police confirmed they had detained the three French protesters, members of the Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders.

However, it remained unclear whether they would face trial for evading a massive security operation to unfurl a black banner depicting the Games’ trademark Olympic rings as handcuffs.

If the flame is sacred then so are humans, the French group said in a statement. We cannot let the Chinese seize the Olympic flame, a symbol of peace, without denouncing the dramatic situation of human rights in the country.

Olympic officials said it was the first time the movement’s flame-lighting ritual was upstaged by protests at the birthplace of the Games. Watch footage of torch ceremony security breach

Broadcast live, the stunt left Greek commentators speechless, but in China, state TV cut away to a pre-recorded scene, according to the Associated Press, preventing millions of Chinese viewers from watching the tumultuous start to their nation’s Games.

The torch was lit moments later as it began its epic 130-day, 137,000-kilo meters (85,000-miles) journey. Read all about history of the Olympic torch

More protests, however, followed. A Tibetan woman covered herself with red paint and lay on the ground, forcing torchbearers to weave around her as other protesters shouted Flame of shame.

We have Tibetans popping out of every corner protesting during the torch relay, said a senior Greek Olympics official. It will be very difficult to guard this relay.

A pro-Tibet group said in a statement that two of its members were violently detained after unfurling banners and Tibetan flags on the road as the torch made its way through Olympia.

No injuries or scuffles with police were reported.

Meanwhile, a Chinese activist who called for human rights ahead of the Olympics was sentenced to five years in prison, AP reported.

Yang Chunlin had gathered more than 10,000 signatures for an open letter titled We want human rights, not the Olympics. He was charged with subverting the power of the state, a charge authorities in China commonly use the charge to clamp down on dissent.

China’s communist leadership has faced a public relations fiasco since a spate of demonstrations turned violent in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on March 10, the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against communist rule.

Beijing claims 22 people have died in the clashes but the toll has since then varied and been impossible to confirm because of a news blackout imposed by China on the country’s interior. View map of all countries torch will visit

Earlier on Monday, Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee said he was engaged in a silent diplomacy with Beijing on Tibet but ruled out a boycott of the Games.

Greek authorities, humiliated by the security debacle, denounced the incidents.

The government condemns every attempt to interfere with the ceremony for the lighting of the Olympic flame through actions that have no relation at all with the Olympic spirit, said Evangelos Antonaros, Greece’s junior government spokesman.

Monday’s ceremony — held an hour earlier because of storm forecasts — marked the official countdown to the Beijing Games, setting off the Olympic flame on an unprecedented global odyssey.

Greek actress Maria Nafpliotou, portraying the High Priestess, lit the first torch. Alexandros Nikolaidis, a Greek athlete who won a silver medal in taekwondo at the 2004 Olympics, then carried the flame for the first mile.

After a ceremonial arrival in Beijing, the flame will move around the world through April. At the beginning of May, it begins a three-month trek through at least 111 Chinese cities in more than 30 provinces and regions. The mammoth trip is the longest ever in Olympic history.

The most controversial leg of the torch relay is planned for June, when it is scheduled to be carried through Tibet and three neighboring provinces where violent unrest broke out this month.

Olympic officials insisted last week that the relay in these areas will proceed as planned.

All the preparations for the torch relay in Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai and Gansu are proceeding very well, Beijing Olympics organizer Jiang Xiaoyu said.

The flame is set to arrive in Beijing on August 6, where it will be paraded around the city until entering the stadium for the Olympics opening ceremony on August 8. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

found here.

Carrying a torch for tradition

(CNN) — The Olympic flame on Monday began its 34-day journey around the world ahead of the 2008 Beijing Games. Here are some facts about the centuries-old traditions behind the relay and its modern development.

The torch is a tradition carried over from ancient Greece when fire was revered as a gift from the god Prometheus. Greeks would hold relay races, passing a torch between athletes and light a cauldron during their games as a symbol of purity, reason and peace.

The flame was reintroduced to the Olympics at the 1928 Amsterdam Games but the first modern torch relay was at the 1936 Berlin Summer Games when a flame was lit in Olympia, Greece and carried to the opening ceremony in Germany. Since the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria every Olympics has begun with a torch relay from Greece to the opening ceremony.

Each torch must be capable of withstanding wind, rain, sleet, snow and extremes of climate. It must carry enough fuel to last its leg of the journey but be light enough for each runner to carry comfortably.

Although the design of the torch varies from year to year, the overall modern look was created by a Disney artist, John Hench, who created the torch for the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 torches are made to carry the flame for each relay.

Though the original flame for any Olympic relay is still lit by the sun using a parabolic mirror, modern torches are powered by pressurized liquid fuel. Earlier incarnations burned a variety of materials, including olive oil and gunpowder. At the 1956 games a mixture of magnesium and aluminum used to light the final torch produced burning chunks that fell and burned the runner’s arm.

A back-up flame is always carried alongside the relay in case a torch goes out. In the 1998 run-up to the Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, the torch reportedly went out four times in one day as the flame was battered by heavy snow and winds of up to 72 kilometers an hour.

The flame has been transported by plane, boat, underwater and even through space. On aircraft, where open flames are not allowed, it is usually stored inside an enclosed lamp similar to ones used by miners. Ahead of the 2000 Sydney Games, a special torch was designed to burn underwater for a trip across the Great Barrier Reef. In 1976 the flame was converted to an electronic pulse and transmitted via satellite to Canada, where a laser beam was used to re-ignite the fire. Other means of transport have included a canoe, a camel and Concorde.

Athletes, musicians, actors and politicians — and thousands of ordinary people — have all carried the torches, with the final job of igniting the main Olympic flame often falling to a major sports star. Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali performed the honors in 1996, Australian aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman in 2000 and French football star Michel Platini in 1992. E-mail to a friend

found here.

Bhutan elections to end royal rule

THIMPU, Bhutan (AP) — The secluded Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, a land that has made promoting happiness its paramount goal, was ending more than a century of royal rule Monday with its first parliamentary elections.

And no one, apart from the king who is giving up his power, seems happy about it.

Candidates proudly call themselves monarchists. Party workers describe the vote as heartbreaking. Voters fret about what will become of the Land of the Thunder Dragon when it trades its Precious Ruler for politicians.

Bhutan has long been an eccentric holdout from modernity — a mountainous land where Buddhist kings reigned supreme, only allowing the Internet and television in 1999 and coming up with the idea of Gross National Happiness, an all-encompassing political philosophy that seeks to balance material progress with spiritual well-being.

Unlike the upheavals that have so often been the midwives of democracy around the world, Bhutan has never been more peaceful or prosperous; it’s only voting because the king said it should.

No one wants this election, said Yeshi Zimba, one of the candidates, as he campaigned door-to-door in the capital, Thimpu. His Majesty has guided us this far, and people are asking, ‘Why change now?’

After the election, the king, 28-year-old Jigme Keshar Namgyal Wangchuck, will remain head of state and will likely retain much influence.

But elected leaders will be in charge, a fact that worries many here who have seen the disastrous democracies in nearby Nepal and Bangladesh, as well as the often corrupt and chaotic political scene in neighboring India.

People were looking around at what is happening in South Asia and saying, ‘No thank you’, said Kinley Dorji, who runs the state-owned newspaper, Kuensel.

But His Majesty said you can’t leave such a small, vulnerable country in the hands of only one man who was chosen by birth and not by merit.

The Bhutanese are not so sure, and the two political parties both adhere closely to the king’s vision, promoting Gross National Happiness and featuring leaders who each twice served as prime minister under royal rule.

Monday’s vote for the 47-seat National Assembly is the latest step in a slow engagement with the world, which Bhutan began in the early 1960s.

Back then Bhutan was a medieval society with no paved roads, no electricity and no hospitals. Goods were bartered rather than bought, and almost no foreigners were let in.

But across the Himalayas, other isolated Buddhist kingdoms like Tibet and Sikkim were coming under the sway of foreign powers, and Bhutan — sandwiched between Asian giants India and China — decided that it needed to change to survive.

In the past, the strategy was to hide up in the mountains, said Dorji, the newspaper editor.

Not anymore. The country of about 600,000 people now has a cash economy. It’s even likely to soon join the World Trade Organization and thousands of tourists are welcomed every year, albeit on heavily supervised and expensive tours.

Still, Bhutan retains many of its peculiar ways. Mountain climbing is banned to preserve the pristine forests that laws dictate must cover 60 percent of the country. Bhutanese must go about in public in their national dress: a colorfully striped knee-length robe for men and an embroidered silk jacket with a wraparound skirt for women.

But this dedication to preserving Bhutanese culture has a darker side.

More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalis — a Hindu minority concentrated in southern Bhutan — were forced out in the early 1990s and have been living as refugees in eastern Nepal.

Bhutan says most left voluntarily, and refugee rebel groups have set off at least nine small bomb blasts this year in an effort to disrupt the election, killing one person. To head off more attacks, Bhutan sealed its borders Sunday and said it will not reopen them until after the vote.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalis still live in Bhutan — 19 are candidates — but the fate of the refugees has not been an issue because parties are barred from speaking about matters of security or citizenship. They also cannot talk about the royal family.

With arguably the most contentious issue out of bounds, the campaign, which ended Saturday, has been exceedingly mild with most candidates more likely to compliment their competitors than criticize them.

Many have found the whole exercise needlessly disruptive.

Why do we need these people and their arguments? asked 48-year-old Kinzang Tshering after listening to one candidate’s pitch. They tell us they are better than the other ones. How should I know which one is better? I think His Majesty is better.
found here.