Plot to Remove ‘Dear Leader’ Suspected by N. Korea
BEIJING — North Korea is denying reports that portraits of its leader, Kim Jong-il, have been removed from public places, calling the accounts a U.S. plot to overthrow his government.
“It didn’t happen before and will never happen,” the Xinhua News Agency quoted North Korean Foreign Ministry official Ri Gyong Son as saying in the capital, Pyongyang.
Ri called the reports “an intrigue [where] the United States and its attaching countries want to overthrow” the North’s government, according to Xinhua. It didn’t say when he made the comments.
Kim and his late father, communist founder Kim Il Sung, are the focus of an intense, official cult of personality in North Korea; their portraits are hung in all public places.
Global Warming Fight to Start February
PARIS — The Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming will take effect starting Feb. 16, 2005, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) announced after Russia formally handed over its instrument of ratification to Secretary General Kofi Annan in Nairobi.
The Bonn-based UNFCCC, the offshoot of the 1992 Rio Summit, is Kyoto’s parent convention.
“A period of uncertainty has closed. Climate change is ready to take its place at the top of the global agenda,” said Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UNFCCC’s secretariat.
Russia’s move removed a years-long question mark over the future of the landmark agreement, which aims to curb carbon gas pollution blamed for disturbing the Earth’s climate system.
Kyoto’s framework was agreed to in 1997, but it took four years to agree on its complex rulebook.
In 2001, the United States walked away from Kyoto, with the Bush administration saying the cost for meeting its targets would be too high for the U.S. economy.
Free Trade Discussed for Asia-Pacific Zone
SANTIAGO, Chile — At the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, ministers representing 21 Pacific Rim economies said they discussed a proposal suggested by business leaders for a Free Trade Area for the Asia-Pacific region. They said it would be discussed by leaders during the summit but stopped short of endorsing a formal study.
A free trade zone among APEC economies would form a bloc that would dwarf the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas currently under negotiation. The economies of APEC members account for nearly half of the world’s trade.
Officials conceded that negotiating such a deal would “be a very challenging exercise given the diversity of the 21 economies in the APEC.”
They also welcomed progress made by Vietnam and Russia in their bids to join the World Trade Organization.
Windows, Linux Battle in India
BANGALORE, India — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer concluded multimillion-dollar software partnerships with two of India’s leading outsourcing firms and stepped up plans to hire more programmers in the South Asian nation.
Infosys Technologies and Microsoft said they would invest $8 million together in the new venture.
Ballmer also met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to push for increased use of Microsoft products in government computers.
India has become a battleground for supremacy between Microsoft’s Windows — a proprietary software — and Linux, the open-source software that can be downloaded from the Internet for free.
Governments of several Indian states have embraced Linux while others have accepted software donations from Microsoft.
Japanese Women Not Getting Hitched
TOKYO — The percentage of Japanese women ages 25 to 29 who have never married has surged from 40% to 54% in the last decade. The percentage for women ages 30 to 34 has increased from 14% to 27%, according to government statistics.
In the United States, 40% of women ages 25 to 29 are single as are 23% of those ages 30 to 34. The trend to stay unmarried is more pronounced in England at 65% in the 25 - 29 age group, although that sinks to 39% for 30 - 34 age group.
Japanese men are also delaying marriage, often citing economic reasons: trouble finding a job with financial stability. They have also cited hesitance in assuming familial responsibilities as a reason.
Many Japanese women, however, see a single major reason for their growing distaste for marriage: men who expect their wives to cheerfully surrender their jobs or juggle careers while single-handedly serving their husbands and caring for the children.
“We’re thirsting for a good marriage, but we can’t find the right guy. Men haven’t changed their old mindset. Women have grown too powerful for them,” said Junko Sakai, a single 38-year-old whose recent book Howl of the Loser Dogs sold more than 300,000 copies by telling Japan’s single women how to survive the backlash against them.
The Japanese government is worried that the plunging birthrate will mean labor shortages in the future and a drop in support for the growing ranks of the elderly.