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President Obama: ''We are closer to achieving health insurance reform than we have ever been''

US President Barack Obama has accused some opponents of his healthcare reform proposals of trying to "scare the heck" out of people.

Anti-reform campaigners had created "bogeymen out there that just aren't real", he said at a town-hall style meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Passing a healthcare reform bill is Mr Obama's top domestic priority for 2009.

But in recent weeks, opponents of reform have been making serious accusations about his proposals.

The former Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, said last week that the president wanted to set up "death panels" of government officials with the power to determine whether disabled or elderly Americans are "worthy of healthcare".

In fact, under proposals drawn up by the US House of Representatives, the government would pay for elderly Americans to receive voluntary consultations with doctors to discuss their end-of-life care.

"The rumour that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on Grandma because we've decided that its too expensive to let her live anymore," said Mr Obama.

"Somehow, it has gotten spun into this idea of death panels. I am not in favour of that, I want to clear the air here."

Meetings disrupted

Some 47 million Americans currently do not have health insurance, and rising healthcare costs are a major contributing factor to America's spiralling budget deficit.

But there is disagreement about how to go about reforming the system.

HEALTHCARE IN THE US

47 million uninsured, 25 million under-insured

Healthcare costs represent 16% of GDP, almost twice OECD average

Reform plans would require all Americans to get insurance

Some propose public insurance option to compete with private insurers

Q&A: US healthcare reform

Democrats in the House of Representatives have reportedly reached a deal on a bill that would mandate all Americans to take out health insurance, with subsidies for the less well-off paid for by a tax on families earning over $350,000 a year.

The House bill would also offer Americans who do not get coverage through their employer the chance to join a publicly-run scheme.

But in the Senate negotiations have stalled, with moderate senators expressing opposition to both the tax and the public plan proposed by the House.

Both chambers need to agree on a bill before it can become law.

HAVE YOUR SAY

People are afraid to go to the hospital in an emergency, because they do not want to saddle their families with debilitating debt

Louise Wilson, Grand Rapids, MI

Send us your comments

Mr Obama had called on the Senate and the House to agree their own versions of a bill before the August recess, but lawmakers missed the deadline.

During the recess, a number of healthcare "town-hall" meetings hosted by Democratic politicians have been targeted by conservative opponents of reform.

The opposition has sometimes been quite vocal, with anti-reform campaigners chanting slogans and shouting down supporters of reform.

Proponents of reform say the protests are being organised by well-funded lobby groups, while opponents say they are a genuine expression of anger at Mr Obama's proposals.

At the New Hampshire meeting, which did not feature any angry scenes, the president called on his opponents to temper their behaviour.

"I do hope that we will talk with each other and not over each other," he said.

Polls suggest that a majority of Americans support many of the administration's healthcare proposals.

Children killed 'over mafia fear'

The Nice apartment where the family lived.

The children's bodies were found in the family's Nice apartment

A mother has confessed to drowning her two children in a bathtub to "protect them from mafia threats," French prosecutors have said.

The woman, 39, phoned her husband and police and confessed to killing her three-year-old son and two-year-old daughter in their well-furnished home.

Police found the bodies in the family's Nice apartment, in the south of France.

The woman was due to have a psychiatric examination. She is reported to have attempted suicide after the drowning.

The family had been in the apartment for three months, Nice-Matin reported.

Prosecutor Olivier Caracotch said she confessed to drowning the toddlers to "protect them from threats by the mafia," AFP quoted him as saying.

The husband, also 39, was taken to a police station after there was an altercation between him and police officers at the apartment. He was later released.

Taiwan mudslide survivors found

Rescuers reach Taiwan village

About 700 people missing in southern Taiwan after Typhoon Morakot have been found alive, army officials say.

People from several villages are said to have made it to higher ground before mud and rock engulfed their homes.

Among the survivors found by rescue teams are 200 from Hsiaolin village, reports the Taiwan Central News Agency.

However, despite frantic rescue efforts in Hsiaolin and elsewhere since the weekend, hundreds of people are still missing, feared buried under the mud.

See graphic showing level of rainfall Morakot brought to Taiwan

President Ma Ying-jeou said hundreds of people were likely to have died.

He was visiting the rescue operation centre in Qishan in rural southern Taiwan.

Military helicopters have been ferrying villagers out of communities cut off by the storms and floods after roads and bridges were washed away.

"We have found around 700 people alive in three villages last night and 26 more this morning. We are deploying 25 helicopters to evacuate them," said Maj Gen Richard Hu, a senior official in the rescue effort.

The typhoon struck Taiwan at the weekend, causing the worst flooding in 50 years. The official death toll stands at 63.

'Save my village'

The BBC's Cindy Sui in Qishan says the authorities fear that hundreds more people could still be trapped.

A statue of Buddha’s head submerged in flood waters and debris from Typhoon Morakot in southern Taiwan on 11 August 2009

In pictures: Taiwan rescue

'Washed away by the typhoon'

Eyewitness: Pacific storms

In Hsiaolin alone, rescue workers said about 100 were unaccounted for as of Tuesday and thought possibly to have been buried alive.

Our correspondent says family members from surrounding areas have been converging on Hsiaolin, demanding that helicopters be sent to their villages too.

Some are carrying signs that read, "Save my village".

The search for survivors has been a slow process as the only way in and out of the villages is by helicopter, our correspondent adds.

The BBC's Alastair Leithead, also at the Qishan rescue base, says a high school playing field has become a landing pad for helicopters, and ambulances are lining the running track to ferry the injured to hospital.

Alastair Leithead: "It's been another tough day for the rescuers"

Morakot lashed Taiwan with at least two metres (80in) of rain over the weekend.

It is typhoon season in the North West Pacific, which brings storms like Morakot with exceptionally high rainfall and strong winds, said Liam Dutton from the BBC Weather Centre.

But, to put it in context, he said Morokot brought around 40 times as much rain to Taiwan as would fall on a typical wet weekend in the United Kingdom.

Typhoon Morakot has caused at least $225m (£135m) in agricultural damage, while nearly 30,000 houses are still without power and 750,000 homes are without water, according to the latest estimates from officials.

The storm also hit mainland China, where about 1.4 million people were evacuated from coastal areas, eight people died in flooding and up to 10,000 homes were destroyed.

In the town of Pengxi in China's eastern province of Zhejiang, a landslide toppled seven older houses, reportedly killing two people.

Meanwhile in Japan, another seasonal storm, Typhoon Etau, caused floods and landslides that have killed at least 15 people since the weekend and left a dozen missing.

About 1,000 people spent Tuesday night in shelters and 4,600 households were without water, officials said.

Rotary helps Cambodian village get well

John Egglestone (left) and Laurie Orchard.

By Liina FlynnJohn

In the village of Bung Sudok in the Pursat province of Cambodia, children spend much of their day carrying drinking water from a polluted stream back to their village. This lack of safe drinking water and infrastructure has motivated members of the Rotary Club of Lismore West to reach out and make a difference.

“In Bung Sudok, the majority of illnesses are water related,” president John Egglestone said. “There is no electricity there and much of the country has been denuded of forest, so it’s hard for villagers to find fuel to boil water and make it safe.

“If we can build wells and schools we can create a better future for the people there,” he said.

Working in partnership with other Rotary clubs around the world, the club is involved in an international project to improve the living conditions for the 1300 people living in Bung Sudok.

Beginning with the construction of a deep multi-purpose well, the ‘Sustainable Cambodia’ project is about helping villagers acquire the skills to sustain themselves in the future.

“Cambodia is the most poverty stricken country in south-east Asia and has the worst child mortality rate in the world, ” the club’s international services director Laurie Orchard said.

Facilitated by Cambodia-based group Sustainable Cambodia, which has already constructed 200 wells across the country, the project has involved extensive consultation with the villagers themselves.

“For the projects to be sustainable, the villagers’ involvement is an essential part,” Mr Orchard said. “The villagers will have to do much of the work themselves, such as dig the first 30 metres of the well before it can be drilled, cased and pumped. They will then sign contracts to undertake the ongoing maintenance of it.”

Mr Orchard said that building the well would cost Rotary about $4000 and that each family in the village will then pay 12 cents per month to fund the upkeep of the well.

“We also have a plan to give a village family a pair of breeding animals. The villagers will sign a contract and then give any offspring to other people in the village.”

Mr Orchard and Mr Egglestone plan to travel to Cambodia later this year to visit the village and are encouraging people from our local community to get involved.

“We’d like to ask local farmers here if they would be willing to volunteer their time and expertise to travel to Cambodia as advisors and teach them how to grow things,” Mr Egglestone said.

“In the wet season, the villagers plant rice and hope it’s enough to get them through the dry season. One of the future projects we will support will be sending an agricultural expert to teach villagers to plant vegetable crops to supplement the annual rice crop,” he said. “We are trying to kick-start a poor country, and we can only do this with the help of the community.”
For more information phone Mr Orchard on 6625 2892.

Russian navy joins hunt for ship

The Arctic Sea was reportedly boarded by up to 10 gunmen
Russia's navy has been deployed to find a ship reportedly hijacked three weeks ago in the Baltic Sea.

Up to five vessels - reported to include nuclear submarines - will be involved in the search for the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea, the navy confirmed.

It has a 15-strong Russian crew and was reportedly taking timber worth $1.5m (£900,000) from Finland to Algeria when it was boarded by gunmen on 24 July.

The Arctic Sea was last sighted off the north coast of France on 30 July.

British authorities say the 4,000-tonne vessel may have been spotted subsequently by a Portuguese coastal patrol aircraft, but its current location remains unknown.

Click here for a map charting sightings of the Arctic Sea

Massive search

"All Russian navy ships in the Atlantic have been sent to join the search for the Arctic Sea," Russia's naval commander, Adm Vladimir Vysotsky, was quoted as saying by Moscow's Itar-Tass news agency.

There didn't seem anything suspicious when contact was made. It could well be that a crew member had a gun put to his head

Mark Clark
Maritime and Coastguard Agency
"All the information-intelligence systems of our armed forces, including the space-borne systems, the system of identification of sea vessels and others, have been calibrated to look for the missing ship," he said.

Operations will be centred on the patrol ship Ladny, a guided missile frigate which is part of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

UK authorities, which made contact with the Arctic Sea before it entered the busy shipping waters of the English channel, described the situation as "bizarre".

"Who would think that a hijacked ship could pass through one of the most policed and concentrated waters in the world?" said Mark Clark of the UK's Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).

"There didn't seem anything suspicious when contact was made," he added. "It could well be that a crew member had a gun put to his head by a hijacker when contact was made, but who knows?"

The Finnish shipping line operating the ship reportedly said it was boarded by up to 10 armed men claiming to be anti-drugs police as it sailed through the Baltic Sea on 24 July.

But the intruders are reported to have left the vessel 12 hours later on an inflatable boat, and it is unclear who is in current command of the ship.

Commercial dispute?

The Arctic Sea had been scheduled to dock in the Algerian port of Bejaia on 4 August.

While world leaders have become increasingly concerned about pirates operating off the coast of Somalia, maritime experts suggest the case of the Arctic Sea reflects a different kind of piracy.

Nick Davis, who runs the private security firm Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, told the BBC's Today programme the relatively low value of the cargo suggested the ship's seizure may be the result of a "commercial dispute" in which one party had decided to "take matters into their own hands".

But he added: "Piracy is piracy - if someone's wanting to take that vessel, and they're not authorised, and they use a speedboat to go and get it, then it's no different to what the Somalis do."

Relatives of the Arctic Sea's 15 crew members - all of whom are said to come from the northern Russian port city of Arkhangelsk - have so far been unwilling to speak to the media.

Bomber not dead, say Indonesians

Police said Ibrohim was a florist at the hotels
Police hunting the suspected mastermind of Indonesia's hotel bombings, Noordin Mohamed Top, have said a man shot dead in a weekend raid was not him.

DNA tests identified the man as one of Noordin's accomplices in the attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta on 17 July, police said.

Earlier reports had suggested the dead man was Malaysian-born Noordin.

His is one of Asia's most wanted men, and has been blamed for a string of attacks including the 2002 Bali blasts.

The BBC's Rebecca Henschke, in Jakarta, says police are trying to play down their disappointment, but the news that Noordin was not killed will be a major blow for them.

They have been hunting him for seven years.

'Explosive smuggler'

Police named the dead man as Ibrohim and said he had worked as a florist at both of the hotels that were attacked by suicide bombers.

Nine people were killed in the attacks.

"Ibrohim was a planner who was always present in the meetings with Noordin Top," police spokesman Nanan Soekarna told a news conference.

This year's July bombings were an ugly reminder of past attacks
Police released new security camera footage showing Ibrohim escorting the alleged Marriott bomber around the hotel on 8 July, and later bringing bomb-making material into the hotel's staff-only loading bay.

Mr Soekarna added that the militants were planning an attack on the house of President Susilo Bambang Yudohyono, and claimed Ibrohim was going to be a suicide bomber in that operation.

On Saturday police mounted a siege of a farmhouse in Temanggung, central Java, after a tip-off suggested Noordin was hiding out there.

Initial reports suggested Noordin had been killed after an hours-long shoot-out.

But analysts had doubted the claims, and police chiefs are now not certain whether Noordin was ever at the farmhouse.

He is believed to have formed a violent offshoot from the al-Qaeda-linked militant network Jemaah Islamiah.

As well as the 2002 Bali bombings, Noordin is thought to have been behind attacks on the Jakarta Marriott in 2003, the Australian embassy in 2004, and also on a series of restaurants in Bali in 2005 in which more than 20 died.

Russia to boost Abkhazia presence

Vladimir Putin said Russia would deploy more forces in Abkhazia
Russia is to spend almost $500m (£300m) next year reinforcing its military bases in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia, the prime minister says.

Vladimir Putin's announcement came as he arrived in Abkhazia for talks.

He said Russia was committed to defending and financing the small strip of land in Georgia's north-west corner.

Moscow officially recognised the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia following the war a year ago between Russia and Georgia.

Apart from Russia only Nicaragua recognised the regions' independence in the conflict's aftermath; both areas are still widely held to remain part of Georgia.

Russian citizenship

While in Abkhazia, Mr Putin is expected to meet local leaders for talks on economic co-operation and other issues, the AFP news agency reports.

ABOUT ABKHAZIA

Declared independence from Georgia in 1999, but Tbilisi continues to regard it as a breakaway region
Only Moscow and Nicaragua recognise Abkhazia's declared independence from Georgia
Population approximately 250,000 in 2003
Major languages: Russian, Georgian, Abkhaz

Q&A: Conflict in Georgia
He began his visit by laying a wreath at a war memorial to remember servicemen who died in the 1992-1993 war between Abkhaz separatists and the Georgian government.

Speaking ahead of the trip, Mr Putin said Russia would deploy more forces in Abkhazia and build a "modern border-guard system" to guarantee the security of the two breakaway regions.

"All this will cost about 15-16bn rubles [$463m; £280m]," he said.

Moscow is rapidly establishing facts on the ground in Abkhazia following last year's war, says the BBC's Richard Galpin in the region's main city, Sukhumi.

The bulk of the money will be spent on military bases and strengthening the border between Abkhazia and Georgia, says our correspondent.

The Abkhaz government wants Moscow to build a big navy base south of Sukhumi, which could ultimately provide an alternative home for the Russian Black Sea fleet currently based in Ukraine, a senior Abkhaz official told the BBC.

Russia currently has about 1,000 troops in Abkhazia and about 800 in South Ossetia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said recently, adding that about 1,500 would be deployed in each territory by the end of this year.

Russian troops have been in Georgia's breakaway regions since the conflict
Mr Putin also said Moscow was already helping finance the region's overall budget and was paying people's pensions.

A large proportion of Abkhazia's population has already been given Russian citizenship.

The build-up of Russia's military presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is regarded by Georgia as a clear violation of its sovereignty.

Last year's five-day conflict erupted on 7 August as Georgia tried to retake control of South Ossetia.

Russia quickly repelled the assault and pushed its forces deeper inside Georgia, before pulling back.

Cambodia Rice Sales to Vietnam Ahead of Forecasts

Hanoi, Aug 12 - Cambodia has sold more than 1 million tonnes of rice to neighbouring Vietnam in the first half of this year, beating Vietnamese industry forecasts for the whole of 2009, a Vietnamese newspaper reported.

The increased sales from Cambodia, plus a bumper summer-autumn crop, will help Vietnam reach a record export volume of 6 million tonnes this year, Vietnam Food Association Deputy Chairman Nguyen Tho Tri told the Saigon Economic Times newspaper.

The Industry and Trade Ministry has an even higher forecast of 7 million tonnes for Vietnam rice exports this year, from 4.65 million tonnes shipped in 2008.

"The rice volume poured in quickly, having exceeded 1 million tonnes at the end of June because many Cambodian firms switched sales to Vietnam from Thailand," Tri was quoted as saying in an interview published late on Tuesday by the newspaper, which is run by the Ho Chi Minh City Industry and Trade Department.

Cambodia's rice production increased to 7.2 million tonnes for the 2008/09 season from 6.7 million in 2007/08.

Tri said demand for rice remained strong because the United Nations had called on countries to give food aid to many African countries facing serious food shortages.

"If they join the aid, they would choose Vietnamese rice due to its cheap price," he said. But he added that the economic crisis had slowed aid flow to Africa.

Rice prices in Vietnam softened slightly this month as the summer-autumn harvest has been peaking, industry reports show.

Five-percent broken rice prices have eased to 6,700-6,800 dong (37.6-38.2 U.S. cents) per kg, free-on-board without packing, against 6,750-6,800 dong in the last week of July, the Vietnam Food Association said.

The association has ordered 21 members to start buying a combined 400,000 tonnes of husked rice from Monday at a price of at least 3,800 dong per kg of paddy to stop price falls while export demand is slow.

Cambodia Rice Sales to Vietnam Ahead of Forecasts

Hun Xen is ready to use the military to fight a defenseless woman, he also lashed out on unnamed foreign countries

Coward Strongmen vs Defenseless Women?

Hun Xen re-affirmed his defamation lawsuit stance

12 August 2009
DAP news
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

In the morning of 12 August 2009, during a ceremony for the distribution of diplomas and for the inauguration of the university of law and economic science, Hun Xen displayed his unwavering stance in regards to the defamation lawsuit he brought up. Hun Xen said that he will play along [in any appeals], whether it is by legal or military means, he will play along till the end. Hun Xen warned a certain woman, telling her not to act as a representative of women.

Hun Xen also issued strong warnings to a number of NGOs that are not neutral and that are leaning to the opposition party. Hun Xen also lashed out at a number of foreign countries that are always getting involved in Cambodia’s internal issues. He told these countries to pull out of Cambodia because Cambodia has sufficient democracy already.

During the ceremony, Cambodia’s Strongman also confirmed his strong stance to lead the government, and he said that he will continue leading the country in 2018 and 2023. He also reminded the opposition party to think about its own survival also.

Hun Xen also appealed on Cambodians to respect the traffic law, and they should install rear mirrors on their motorcycles and wear helmets to protect themselves. Hun Xen also called on motorcycle owners to pay taxes.

asianews

Children killed 'over mafia fear'

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