BRUSSELS - The United States and Europe should cut back on production of biofuels because they are hurting food supply at a time of rising prices, an adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday. Biofuels derived from crops have come under attack in recent weeks on fears they compete with food for farming land and help to push up food prices, worsening a global crisis that is affecting millions of poor.
"We need to cut back significantly on our biofuels programmes," said Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent U.S. academic who is a special adviser to Ban on anti-poverty goals.
"(They) were understandable at a time of much lower food prices and larger food stocks but do not make sense now in a global food scarcity condition," Sachs told a news conference.
High food and fuel prices have sparked protests and riots in poor countries across the world in the past few months. Many governments have introduced food subsidies or export restrictions to counter rising costs.
"In the United States as much as one third of maize crop this year will go to gas tank. This is a huge blow to the world food supply," Sachs said before talks in Brussels with EU lawmakers.
EU leaders pledged last year to increase the proportion of biofuels used in petrol- and diesel-consuming land transport to 10 percent by 2020 as part of measures to tackle climate change. Governments are now working on draft EU laws.
Faced with growing unease among EU states over food prices and the biofuels' green credentials, the European Commission has stuck to the target, but EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said last month it would be subject to strict conditions to prevent social harm.
The United States is the world's biggest producer of biofuels. The fuels are made from crops like corn, wheat, sugar and palm oil, which refiners turn into ethanol or oil to replace gasoline and diesel.
Supporters say they are the only renewable alternative to fossil fuels and generally result in lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Incest suspect's lawyer defends insanity plea
VIENNA - A lawyer for Josef Fritzl, the 73-year-old Austrian accused of keeping his daughter as a sex slave in an underground cellar for 24 years, defended his client's likely insanity plea on Monday.
'I believe that someone who is said to have committed such a crime is psychologically ill,' Rudolf Mayer said in an interview with AFP.
'And if someone is psychologically ill, then they must be examined by an expert to determined whether the illness is so far progressed that they cannot be held responsible.'
His client, Fritzl has been remanded in custody since last week after he told police he imprisoned and sexually abused his daughter for more than two decades in a specially-built bunker underneath the family home.
A total of seven children were born out of that abuse, three of whom were kept incarcerated in the 60-square-metre (645-square-feet) cellar.
Another three were legally adopted by Fritzl and lived with him in the house upstairs. The seventh child died shortly after birth and Fritzl told investigators he disposed of the body in a wood-fired boiler in the cellar.
The case has sparked shock and outrage in Austria, triggering widespread debate about tougher sentences for sex criminals.
Mayer rejected suggestions that an insanity plea was a way for Fritzl to get himself off the hook.
'It's about finding out what really happened,' he said. 'This is not just a strategy of mine' to get Fritzl a shorter sentence, Mayer insisted. 'In these sorts of cases, the question of responsibility is asked automatically.'
Neither would such a plea be a way for Fritzl to be released earlier, the lawyer continued.
'A psychiatric commission meets once a year to discuss whether someone can continue to be classified as dangerous or not. In cases such as this one, it can be assumed that the commission will not release a person, not least because of their advanced age. They'll be all the more difficult to treat,' Mayer said.
'I can't imagine that the commission will simply give him a clean bill of health after a few years.'
The lawyer said he had met his client three times last week and would see him again this week.
'I believe I've succeeded in winning his confidence,' he said.
The head of the prison where Fritzl is being detained described him as an 'unproblematic inmate: he's calm, collected and alert.'
However, Fritzl was refusing to take the daily one-hour walk allowed in the prison yard. 'He doesn't want to go out,' prison director Guenther Moerwald told the Austrian news agency APA.
A psychiatrist examined Fritzl on Friday and decided the father did not have suicidal tendencies, the prison chief said.
Thomas Mueller one of Austria's best-known criminologists said Fritzl was a typical case of a 'malignant narcissist'.
The malignant narcissist could only increase their own self-value by oppressing others. 'They lock them in or inflict pain on them. The perpetrator wants to be seen as powerful,' said Mueller, who trained as a profiler with the FBI in the United States.
'To me, it's as if they have a black hole inside them. With every sadistic act, they try to fill that hole. But every time they do something, the hole just gets bigger,' Mueller said in an interview with Austrian public radio Oe3.
Asked why the criminal therefore persisted with the crime, Mueller explained: 'For a short time, they experience a feeling of relief. They have the feeling they have power over life and death. But then the perpetrator sees that there are some things that didn't fit in with their fantasies. So they seek out another victim.'
'Sexually abusing your own child is about power, because you're exercising control,' Mueller said. 'It's easy to control a young, weak child. But when the child grows up, there's an increased danger that they'll rebel.
'So the perpetrator has to think pragmatically, such as building a bunker to lock the victim in.'
By making their captives totally dependent on them, they feel increased self-worth every time they bring them food, Mueller said.
'I believe that someone who is said to have committed such a crime is psychologically ill,' Rudolf Mayer said in an interview with AFP.
'And if someone is psychologically ill, then they must be examined by an expert to determined whether the illness is so far progressed that they cannot be held responsible.'
His client, Fritzl has been remanded in custody since last week after he told police he imprisoned and sexually abused his daughter for more than two decades in a specially-built bunker underneath the family home.
A total of seven children were born out of that abuse, three of whom were kept incarcerated in the 60-square-metre (645-square-feet) cellar.
Another three were legally adopted by Fritzl and lived with him in the house upstairs. The seventh child died shortly after birth and Fritzl told investigators he disposed of the body in a wood-fired boiler in the cellar.
The case has sparked shock and outrage in Austria, triggering widespread debate about tougher sentences for sex criminals.
Mayer rejected suggestions that an insanity plea was a way for Fritzl to get himself off the hook.
'It's about finding out what really happened,' he said. 'This is not just a strategy of mine' to get Fritzl a shorter sentence, Mayer insisted. 'In these sorts of cases, the question of responsibility is asked automatically.'
Neither would such a plea be a way for Fritzl to be released earlier, the lawyer continued.
'A psychiatric commission meets once a year to discuss whether someone can continue to be classified as dangerous or not. In cases such as this one, it can be assumed that the commission will not release a person, not least because of their advanced age. They'll be all the more difficult to treat,' Mayer said.
'I can't imagine that the commission will simply give him a clean bill of health after a few years.'
The lawyer said he had met his client three times last week and would see him again this week.
'I believe I've succeeded in winning his confidence,' he said.
The head of the prison where Fritzl is being detained described him as an 'unproblematic inmate: he's calm, collected and alert.'
However, Fritzl was refusing to take the daily one-hour walk allowed in the prison yard. 'He doesn't want to go out,' prison director Guenther Moerwald told the Austrian news agency APA.
A psychiatrist examined Fritzl on Friday and decided the father did not have suicidal tendencies, the prison chief said.
Thomas Mueller one of Austria's best-known criminologists said Fritzl was a typical case of a 'malignant narcissist'.
The malignant narcissist could only increase their own self-value by oppressing others. 'They lock them in or inflict pain on them. The perpetrator wants to be seen as powerful,' said Mueller, who trained as a profiler with the FBI in the United States.
'To me, it's as if they have a black hole inside them. With every sadistic act, they try to fill that hole. But every time they do something, the hole just gets bigger,' Mueller said in an interview with Austrian public radio Oe3.
Asked why the criminal therefore persisted with the crime, Mueller explained: 'For a short time, they experience a feeling of relief. They have the feeling they have power over life and death. But then the perpetrator sees that there are some things that didn't fit in with their fantasies. So they seek out another victim.'
'Sexually abusing your own child is about power, because you're exercising control,' Mueller said. 'It's easy to control a young, weak child. But when the child grows up, there's an increased danger that they'll rebel.
'So the perpetrator has to think pragmatically, such as building a bunker to lock the victim in.'
By making their captives totally dependent on them, they feel increased self-worth every time they bring them food, Mueller said.
EU to launch visa-free talks ahead of Serb vote
BRUSSELS - The European Commission will start visa liberalisation talks with Serbia this week in a move it hopes will boost the pro-European camp before the May 11 parliamentary election.
EU Commissioner Jacques Barrot will travel to Belgrade on Wednesday and Thursday to present a "road map" for talks that should lead ultimately to visa-free travel in the European Union for Serbia's 7.5 million citizens, a Commission spokesman said on Monday.
"We have a building block to tell Serbs, 'We will open doors to the EU and we invite you to join us and become members of the European family'," spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing said.
The official start of the talks, announced in January, comes a week after the 27-member bloc signed a long-stalled pact on economic and political ties with Serbia in a first formal step on the long road to membership.
The visa road map Barrot will present to Serb President Boris Tadic and Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic includes specific conditions which Serbia needs to fulfil to get visa-free access to the EU, he said.
"After that we can start the talks on the substance. We cannot say when the (visa) liberalisation will take place, but that is the long-term objective."
Conditions include meeting EU standards on security of borders, police cooperation, fight against organised crime and adding biometric identifiers in passports, Roscam Abbing said.
Brussels hopes the prospect of visa-free travel will give beleaguered pro-European forces in Belgrade a political boost.
Tadic defeated nationalist Tomislav Nikolic in the February presidential election, but narrowly.
With public dismay high over Kosovo's Feb. 17 Western-backed secession from Serbia, polls forecast a tight parliamentary vote. Nationalist prime minister Vojislav Kostunica is set to tip the result in favour of the anti-EU camp if the two main parties are tied.
Serbs have needed a visa to travel to the EU since the wars that followed Yugoslavia's break-up in the 1990s. Most young Serbs who will take part in the May 11 election -- which analysts say amounts to a referendum on the country's EU future -- have never been abroad.
The EU overcame internal differences to sign last week a Stabilisation and Association Agreement on political and economic ties with Serbia, although its implementation remains frozen before Serbia fully cooperates with the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
EU Commissioner Jacques Barrot will travel to Belgrade on Wednesday and Thursday to present a "road map" for talks that should lead ultimately to visa-free travel in the European Union for Serbia's 7.5 million citizens, a Commission spokesman said on Monday.
"We have a building block to tell Serbs, 'We will open doors to the EU and we invite you to join us and become members of the European family'," spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing said.
The official start of the talks, announced in January, comes a week after the 27-member bloc signed a long-stalled pact on economic and political ties with Serbia in a first formal step on the long road to membership.
The visa road map Barrot will present to Serb President Boris Tadic and Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic includes specific conditions which Serbia needs to fulfil to get visa-free access to the EU, he said.
"After that we can start the talks on the substance. We cannot say when the (visa) liberalisation will take place, but that is the long-term objective."
Conditions include meeting EU standards on security of borders, police cooperation, fight against organised crime and adding biometric identifiers in passports, Roscam Abbing said.
Brussels hopes the prospect of visa-free travel will give beleaguered pro-European forces in Belgrade a political boost.
Tadic defeated nationalist Tomislav Nikolic in the February presidential election, but narrowly.
With public dismay high over Kosovo's Feb. 17 Western-backed secession from Serbia, polls forecast a tight parliamentary vote. Nationalist prime minister Vojislav Kostunica is set to tip the result in favour of the anti-EU camp if the two main parties are tied.
Serbs have needed a visa to travel to the EU since the wars that followed Yugoslavia's break-up in the 1990s. Most young Serbs who will take part in the May 11 election -- which analysts say amounts to a referendum on the country's EU future -- have never been abroad.
The EU overcame internal differences to sign last week a Stabilisation and Association Agreement on political and economic ties with Serbia, although its implementation remains frozen before Serbia fully cooperates with the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
At least 15,000 killed in Myanmar cyclone
ASSOCIATED PRESS SERVICE
YANGON - At least 15,000 people have been killed in two divisions of Yangon and Irrawaddy in Cyclone Nargis that swept Myanmar's five divisions last Friday and Saturday, according to official sources Monday evening.
The casualties in Irrawaddy division's Bogalay alone are feared to have gone beyond 10,000 and at least 1,000 in Laputta in the same division. Earlier official figures said 3,880 people were killed in Irrawaddy division. The sources said 2,375 people in the division and 504 in Yangon division were missing. In Haing Kyi island in the Irrawaddy division alone, nearly 20,000 houses were destroyed, leaving more than 92,000 people homeless. The deadly cyclone, which occurred over the Bay of Bengal, hit Yangon, Bago, Irawaddy, Kayin and Mon. Myanmar has declared the five divisions and states as disaster-hit regions. The government has formed a national central committee for prevention of natural disaster to carry out relief and resettlement tasks. DPA adds: In Bangkok, United Nations agencies and other international aid organisations met Monday to prepare for emergency disaster relief for the country, although Myanmar's military leaders had yet to give the green light for such an operation.'That's basically a limitation, but the government has at least not said no,' said Terje Skavdal, regional director of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), who headed the Bangkok meeting.While there are already several UN offices in Myanmar, they are small and not capable of managing the aftermath of a disaster of this magnitude.'It's too early to provide an accurate assessment but we're speaking about hundreds of thousands of homeless,' Skavdal said. 'The UN support system is not sufficient inside Myanmar.'There are doubts that the military would welcome international aid at this juncture, as it is gearing up to stage a national referendum Saturday to vote on a draft constitution that promises to legitimise the military's dominant role in Myanmar's future politics.'I think they are too proud to call for international aid,' said Jens Orback, a former Swedish minister for democracy and gender equality who was in Yangon at the weekend to assess preparations for the referendum when he got caught in the cyclone.'I think that now, the generals want to show that they can put the country in order again without international help,' Orback said in Bangkok.Despite the disaster wrought by the cyclone, state media reports Monday confirmed that Myanmar's military regime intended to go ahead with a referendum May 10.'The referendum is only a few days away, and the people are eagerly looking forward to voting,' a government statement carried by state-run media said.The storm's devastation has raised questions about the propriety of the government's referendum plans.'Yangon ... is without electricity and without water, so I don't see how you can conduct a referendum under those conditions,' one Yangon-based Western diplomat said.'It's a catastrophe,' he added. 'Almost all the electricity poles were blown down. It will take weeks to repair.'The Irrawaddy division was also hard hit by Nargis although details about its effects there remained sketchy.Myanmar's third most populous city of Pathein, the Irrawaddy capital, was reportedly inundated by floodwaters, causing untold damage and deaths.The fertile, low-lying division is Myanmar's chief rice-growing area.Damage to the Irrawaddy's irrigation systems and crops was unreported by state television, which is tightly monitored in the military-run country.A Western diplomat said. 'This will certainly effect the rice crop negatively.'The disaster caused sharp rises in fuel and food prices by Monday in Yangon.A bottle of water was selling for 1,000 kyat, compared with 350 kyats last week, while the minimum bus fare had jumped from 50 kyats to 500 kyats in the city, a Yangon resident said.Last week's black-market rate for the kyat was 1,120 to the dollar.
YANGON - At least 15,000 people have been killed in two divisions of Yangon and Irrawaddy in Cyclone Nargis that swept Myanmar's five divisions last Friday and Saturday, according to official sources Monday evening.
The casualties in Irrawaddy division's Bogalay alone are feared to have gone beyond 10,000 and at least 1,000 in Laputta in the same division. Earlier official figures said 3,880 people were killed in Irrawaddy division. The sources said 2,375 people in the division and 504 in Yangon division were missing. In Haing Kyi island in the Irrawaddy division alone, nearly 20,000 houses were destroyed, leaving more than 92,000 people homeless. The deadly cyclone, which occurred over the Bay of Bengal, hit Yangon, Bago, Irawaddy, Kayin and Mon. Myanmar has declared the five divisions and states as disaster-hit regions. The government has formed a national central committee for prevention of natural disaster to carry out relief and resettlement tasks. DPA adds: In Bangkok, United Nations agencies and other international aid organisations met Monday to prepare for emergency disaster relief for the country, although Myanmar's military leaders had yet to give the green light for such an operation.'That's basically a limitation, but the government has at least not said no,' said Terje Skavdal, regional director of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), who headed the Bangkok meeting.While there are already several UN offices in Myanmar, they are small and not capable of managing the aftermath of a disaster of this magnitude.'It's too early to provide an accurate assessment but we're speaking about hundreds of thousands of homeless,' Skavdal said. 'The UN support system is not sufficient inside Myanmar.'There are doubts that the military would welcome international aid at this juncture, as it is gearing up to stage a national referendum Saturday to vote on a draft constitution that promises to legitimise the military's dominant role in Myanmar's future politics.'I think they are too proud to call for international aid,' said Jens Orback, a former Swedish minister for democracy and gender equality who was in Yangon at the weekend to assess preparations for the referendum when he got caught in the cyclone.'I think that now, the generals want to show that they can put the country in order again without international help,' Orback said in Bangkok.Despite the disaster wrought by the cyclone, state media reports Monday confirmed that Myanmar's military regime intended to go ahead with a referendum May 10.'The referendum is only a few days away, and the people are eagerly looking forward to voting,' a government statement carried by state-run media said.The storm's devastation has raised questions about the propriety of the government's referendum plans.'Yangon ... is without electricity and without water, so I don't see how you can conduct a referendum under those conditions,' one Yangon-based Western diplomat said.'It's a catastrophe,' he added. 'Almost all the electricity poles were blown down. It will take weeks to repair.'The Irrawaddy division was also hard hit by Nargis although details about its effects there remained sketchy.Myanmar's third most populous city of Pathein, the Irrawaddy capital, was reportedly inundated by floodwaters, causing untold damage and deaths.The fertile, low-lying division is Myanmar's chief rice-growing area.Damage to the Irrawaddy's irrigation systems and crops was unreported by state television, which is tightly monitored in the military-run country.A Western diplomat said. 'This will certainly effect the rice crop negatively.'The disaster caused sharp rises in fuel and food prices by Monday in Yangon.A bottle of water was selling for 1,000 kyat, compared with 350 kyats last week, while the minimum bus fare had jumped from 50 kyats to 500 kyats in the city, a Yangon resident said.Last week's black-market rate for the kyat was 1,120 to the dollar.
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