Security cameras on trains being considered to reduce groping

TOKYO —

The National Police Agency plans to consider ways to reduce the occurrence of groping on trains, such as installing security cameras inside carriages, after a recent spate of acquittals in groping cases has raised questions about how to investigate them, agency officials said Monday.

A study group to be set up in fiscal 2010 with railway operators and outside experts will discuss the matter, the officials said, but whether the plan to install cameras will be put into place remains to be seen as the discussions will be held under a new administration led by the Democratic Party of Japan.

In its policy package released in July, the DPJ, which won a landslide in Sunday’s general election, raised concerns about the ‘‘harmful effects of an unlimited expansion of police authority, such as the abuse of investigative authority and the invasion of privacy.’’

It also vowed to ‘‘firmly lay down with human rights in mind the rules of administration when new investigative techniques are to be used.’’

The planned study group is also expected to discuss such possible measures as increasing train cars solely for women and deploying security guards on trains based on the results of questionnaires answered by molestation victims and public opinion surveys, the officials said.

The agency filed a request with the Finance Ministry for an 8 million yen budget for the year starting in April next year for the planned study, they said.

In April, the Supreme Court acquitted a college professor of the charge of groping a high school girl on a packed Odakyu Line train, and called on courts to make ‘‘a careful judgment’’ in cases involving molestation because victims’ depositions tend to serve as the only evidence.

Following the ruling, the NPA instructed nationwide police departments to make thorough efforts to gather evidence to back up the victims’ statements, secure contact with witnesses to the arrests of alleged gropers, and promote preventive measures along with railway operators such as installing security cameras on station premises.

9-year-old Japanese guitar whiz dazzles U.S. audiences

NEW YORK —

It is not every day that you see the frontman of a rock group flanked by band mates who are twice his height and age.

At a recent concert at the Highline Ballroom in New York City, lead singer Yuto Miyazawa is busy tuning his guitar. His drummer, Steve Grossman, taps his drumsticks for the next song, but Yuto turns and waves at him to stop, drawing a laugh from the audience and band mates who wait for him to get ready.

‘‘The command he has at 9 years old is scary,’’ said band member Randy McStine to the matinee crowd.

It is a summer vacation to remember for Yuto, the Guinness Book of World Record’s youngest professional guitarist. The fourth grader has been performing in the United States and appearing on TV shows since gaining an online following for his rock videos. His rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘‘Freebird’’ was viewed over 1.5 million times on YouTube and mentioned on message boards and blogs as he became the latest meme in an era of instant Internet celebrities.

The interest attracted the attention of U.S. media and promoters. Yuto has spent his summer learning about America by touring the country playing classic American rocks songs and sharing the stage with some of rock music’s biggest legends.

‘‘My friends are like, ‘Oh really?’ They think I’m just boasting,’’ Yuto said in an interview with Kyodo News.

Steve Bernstein, president of Zenbu Media, discovered the young rocker in Japan at the Bau Haus, a popular live concert venue in Tokyo. It was Bernstein who suggested Yuto learn the oft-requested ‘‘Freebird’’ and uploaded the performance online.

‘‘When I saw Yuto play so effortlessly at 8 years old and so smooth, I felt he had to be shared on a much bigger stage with the world,’’ said Bernstein. ‘‘I believe he will be one of the best guitarists in the world some day and the number one Asia rock star. He might already be that.’’

Originally from Tokyo, Yuto started playing when he was 3 years old, taking after his father, Tsuneo, who also plays the guitar and is an avid rock fan. But Yuto, who has a penchant for guitar solos, quickly surpassed his father’s talents.

‘‘My dad doesn’t play that much anymore,’’ he said. ‘‘He can’t keep up with me. He has different interests now.’’

Yuto cites his influences as Randy Rhoads, Eric Clapton and Metallica. He has already shared the stage with legendary guitarists like G.E. Smith and Les Paul, who passed away recently. But his favorite so far is Ozzy Osbourne, whom he met for the first time this year on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

‘‘I was surprised. I didn’t really talk to him much, but I asked him to come to Japan,’’ he said.

Nowadays he only practices guitar for less than an hour a day and takes half-hour lessons once a week. He polishes his singing by taking weekly English lessons, making it easier for him to converse with fans asking for his autograph and pictures.

Despite minimal preparation and sharing the stage with band mates who are much older, Yuto said he does not have any pre-performance jitters. He effortlessly performs Black Sabbath’s ‘‘Crazy Train,’’ Jimi Hendrix’s ‘‘Purple Haze’’ and of course, ‘‘Freebird.’’ He also debuted an original song with English lyrics titled ‘‘Ikimashou’’ (Let’s Go), though currently he said there are no plans for an album.

For his encore, Yuto played ‘‘The Star-Spangled Banner’’ in a manner similar to Jimi Hendrix’s famous performance at Woodstock in 1969.

For the rocker, who has an interest in history, his performance at a New York Mets game on Aug 18 could not have been more fitting as he played the U.S. national anthem in front of the home crowd at Citi Field.

‘‘I know a little about American history now,’’ he said.

Sex theme park gave way to public clamor

By Li Hongmei, People's Daily Online

A galaxy of pioneers in the south-west city of Chongqing ventured out of confines lately to address a taboo turning against the conservative Chinese culture by opening the first ever sex theme park in the country with the aim to improve sex education, but the idea was rapidly poured scorn on and many local residents even see the display as vulgar.

The park manager, Lu Xiaoqing, released to the media that he had been inspired by South Korea's popular sex theme park in Jeju before coming up with the idea to set up his Love Land in China's largest municipality. The park, still under construction, is due to open in October. However, he and his staff already captured enough public gaze last Friday, putting some of the exhibits on display ahead of the schedule—

'A giant revolving model of a woman's legs and lower torso, clad only in an unflattering crimson thong. An oversized replica of a set of genitals, naked human sculptures, and so on,' as was kept in a witness' blog. This, needless to say, delivered more than an emotional shock to the locals, most of whom expressed discontent about the development of China's first sex theme park, which has been described as 'vulgar' and 'distasteful'.

The premature show quickly set up nation-wide debates and then evolved into a general protest, forcing bulldozers to roar into the construction sites. Lu's enlightened idea was thereby nipped in the bud before its flourishing, as demolition already started on Sunday by the order the Chongqing authorities had given.

Last week, China Daily cited Mr. Lu in an interview as saying, 'we are building the park for the good of the public. I have found that the majority of people support my idea, but I have to pay attention and not make the park look vulgar and nasty.' Now it looks as if he were unduly optimistic. Or perhaps, the idea in itself falls short of a close study and scrutiny of the true public mindset. In China, sex is still a taboo subject, and not allowed to be exposed to such an extent.

Even among the vanguard youth, many also deem it a stigma if, say, they are looking at these things when other people are around, although the young generation in China virtually has a more open attitude to sex. A research project conducted by an expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences indicated that in Beijing alone the percentage of people having premarital sex rose from under 16% in 1989 to over 60% in 2004.

The disproval of sex in China is largely rooted in a traditional focus on family instead of individual enjoyment. The majority of Chinese adults, especially those living in the vast countryside, are still taking sex the only way to carry on their family line. Women in rural areas have long been regarded as nothing more than a sex organ. Seldom can they feel any pleasure from sex act, let alone female orgasm or a harmonious sex life.

Viewed from the prism of the ancient Chinese history, however, sex and love affairs used to be one of the main themes in human life and running through civilization, which was manifested by numerous fresco scenes and paintings depicting human activities then. They were not only artistic expressions, but more sent a message to the descedants that in those days the Chinese people had more positive attitudes towards sex. But in the Song and Ming dynasties, people tended to be more ascetic. In modern times, especially ensuing 1919 New Culture Campaign, sex-liberation had once acted as a forceful weapon in a fierce fight against the feudalist sex-oppression, and under its banner, the then passionate youths had chosen to abandon their arranged marriage and undertake an arduous journey to seek after 'true and pure love', which meant a combination of both physical pleasure from sex and spiritual comfort felt though mutual affinity.

The 'Culture Revolution' lasting for the whole decade from 1966 through to 1976 has not merely wrought a cultural havoc to the Chinese nation, but set up huge waves threatening to overwhelm the Chinese aesthetics and ethics. Sex was thereafter labeled as an obscene issue, and people's sexual desires had long been pent up till the end of the cultural calamity.

Since China adopted reform and opening up policy in 1978, and throughout the entire 1980s, things have been looking up and people are more ready than they were to embrace individual enjoyment and civilized comfort. Sex, at long last, comes to light as a subject worth expertise analysis and, as an index well-accepted by ordinary citizens to assess quality of their marriage and life. Sex pleasure is now counted by many of the modern-thinking Chinese as all that a happy marriage is supposed to point to. But, all in all, it is something that stays afloat on the surface, but beneath, the undercurrents still prove to be the forceful resistance both from traditions and from the public mentality toward sex—a once-to-be taboo, and perhaps remaining to be so for long.

Just before the pulling down of the sex theme park, a junior middle school teacher had been sacked as a result of his demonstration in class of how to use condoms properly. The teacher in question was finger pointed by the parents concerned as teaching pornography to the children below the age of 18. And last month, an exhibition displaying the furniture with the function of inducing sex pleasure had to be halted in process when met with the tremendous pressure of the public opinions.

In actuality, however, the Chinese people really need to have more access to information about sex, although it is also a fact that the Chinese are becoming more tolerant to the issue. As to teenagers, the puberty education available now to schools in urban areas has turned out far from enough in popularizing sex knowledge. In addition, most school teachers are reported to be shy of teaching something like this and, instead, they just issue some handouts to the students for self-reading.

The sad reality is that an authoritative survey conducted by All-China Women Federation showed in China only 28% of women have experienced orgasm, while in the west the number is about 90%. Less than a quarter of the Chinese men have reported in the study they are fully pleased with their sex life.

Sex, the most ancient and supposed to be most sacred topic in human life, still takes a long way to go to win its actual popularity in China.

Top ways to beat the debt trap

DEBT can be one of the most lethal forces to confront in the world of personal finance.

It has killed several members of corporate Australia in the past couple of years amid the global financial crisis, and with interest rates about to rise and unemployment heading higher, consumers are likely to be next in line for the pain.

But debt’s deadly power can also be harnessed for good, delivering huge gains to your wealth when used wisely and with long-term goals in mind.

First, the ugly side.

Federal Government Insolvency and Trustee Service figures show total insolvency activity in Australia rose 11 per cent to 36,479 cases last financial year. Most of these were bankruptcies (27,503) and 86 per cent of bankruptcies were non-business related.

So how do you avoid drowning in debt? Financial experts say it is important to have a plan, know what debts to clear first, and act to ensure you don’t become a sad statistic.
A step-by-step plan

MyBudget director Tammy May says people can find it quite difficult to decide what debts to repay first, particularly if they are flooded with repayment requests.

"The first type of debt to pay off is your really bad debt, such as credit cards and highinterest personal loans taken out for non-taxable purposes such as holidays, goods and furniture," she says.
Interactive YOUR SAY: What are your best strategies to pay off debt? Tell us below

Non-taxable debt, also known as private debt, cannot be claimed as a tax deduction. May says the debts with the highest interest rates should be paid off first.

"If you have a personal loan with a high interest rate you are looking to pay off, make sure you will not incur any penalties for doing this," she says.

The chief executive of credit union Community CPS Australia, Kevin Benger, says the highest-interest debts are usually the hardest to control.

"Credit cards, store cards and mobile phone accounts are the big ones that most people generally don’t control well, so get rid of them if you can," Benger says.

Hit the home loan

Most people’s biggest debt is their home loan and once all the other personal debts are under control it is a good idea to focus on reducing the mortgage as it can save you thousands of dollars.

"You can make a big dent in interest costs if you shorten the length of your home loan,’’ Benger says. "Look at ways to shorten it, either by fortnightly repayments or making payments off the principal from time to time if you have got spare cash."

The managing director of Club Financial Services, Andrew Clouston, says the mortgage should be targeted only when all higher-interest debt is cleared. People having problems should not be afraid to seek help, he says.

"A lot of banks now have help lines for people struggling, and a lot of brokers offer advice, too,’’ he says. Too good to be true? May says when signing up for an interest-free deal for goods, people should always read the fine print and understand what they are doing.

"Interest-free and no repayment financing sounds great, and it does work for some people, but there is a catch and many people have found themselves paying more money than what the goods are actually worth," she says.

"What is not pointed out is if an item is not paid for during the interest-free period then often the interest changes to an extremely high rate and interest can be charged on the original amount owed regardless of what is paid."

Clouston says once the interest free period expires on these deals, rates can be about 30 per cent a year. "It can make them virtually impossible to pay off," he says.

"Make sure you have the debt fully paid by the end of the interest-free term.

"It requires discipline, and discipline only comes if you are aware of the term of the debt you have taken on."

Consolidate

NAB financial planning manager Judy Power says an effective and popular debt reduction strategy can be to consolidate higher-interest debts such as credit cards and store cards within a loan where the interest rate is lower.

"Make sure you have a committed repayment plan, because people can easily get into trouble with credit card debts when they don’t have one," Power says.

A danger can be when people consolidate debts into a cheaper loan but then go back to their old spending habits and rack up the credit card again.

"If consolidating, cancel the credit cards or just keep one card with a small limit on it," Power says.

Benger says people with many different debts can find it difficult to keep track of them. "I always advise people to keep a maximum of two cards,’’ he says.

"Any more than that can be a recipe for disaster.

"And don’t be seduced by introductory offers. There’s always temptation. Nothing comes without a cost."

Debit cards

NAB has noticed an increase in customers opting for debit cards – where people only spend their own money.

"Less people are getting credit cards and debit cards are now more readily available," Power says.

"More and more people are using their own funds, rather than borrowed funds, which is a good thing."

Good debt Investment loans for property and shares are good debt, and usually come with a tax deduction for the interest expenses, but there are potential pitfalls.

Benger says people need to "avoid some of the risk of having too much debt".

HLB Mann Judd partner Steven Toth says once taxdeductible debt is repaid it can no longer be claimed, so investors need to consider their future needs.

"You can only claim a tax deduction for debt you incur for investment purposes," he says. "You can use offset accounts rather than pay the debt off."

Victim of kidnap accused speaks out

KATIE Callaway was just going to stop for a minute to pick up some coffee for her boyfriend.

The 25-year-old blackjack dealer from Tahoe City, California, picked up the coffee, some cooking oil and rice and slipped back into her car, then began to back out. That was when Phillip Garrido tapped on the passenger window and asked for a ride.

It was November 22, 1976, and Katherine Gayle Callaway was about to begin a terrifying, night-long ordeal at the hands of a man who has become infamous worldwide since his arrest last week in the 1991 kidnapping of 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard.
Katie Hall

In the 18 years that Garrido allegedly hid Dugard in the backyard of his mother's home in the town of Antioch, he was largely a mystery. On Tuesday, as federal officials downloaded hundreds of pages from his 1977 federal court trial into the US District Court computer system, a fuller, more disturbing picture of the 58-year-old Garrido and the ordeal Ms Callaway suffered emerged.

Evidence showed Garrido was a troubled young man with a sexual addiction so great that he would masturbate in drive-in theatres, restaurants, bars, public toilets and outside the windows of homes. But he was mentally stable enough to understand the charges he was facing, a psychiatrist told the court in 1977.

Ms Callaway's boyfriend at the time, David Wade, recalled on Tuesday how she would later tell him the young man who tapped on the car window ''looked all right''. The polite stranger with the ponytail pointed to a Mercedes-Benz parked nearby and said it was his but had broken down. Ms Callaway agreed to give him a ride. ''That was her first mistake,'' Mr Wade said.

It was about 7.20pm when she picked up Garrido. Ms Callaway barely spoke to Garrido, even as he kept asking questions about her. She turned on to the road towards Mr Wade's home. Garrido told her he lived just a little further up, to keep driving. She pulled over a couple of minutes later where he said he lived.

''I went to say, 'Here you go', and I looked, and there was an empty lot there,'' she testified.

That was when Garrido reached over and turned off the engine. He grabbed her by the neck, then held her hands.

''If you do everything I say, you won't get hurt,'' he told her. ''I'm serious.''

Garrido handcuffed her, put a leather belt around her neck and under her knees to keep her from looking up. Then he threw a coat over her and began driving. Ms Callaway said she tried to remain calm, to engage him in conversation.

''Why me?'' she asked. ''Well, it wasn't you intentionally, could have been anybody,'' he said. ''It just happened that you happened to be attractive, and that is a fault in this case.''

Ms Callaway could see they had driven into Reno, where they were parked in front of a warehouse. He pried the lock off and took her inside. Behind some heavy plastic sheeting, there was a mattress, with a ''red, old satin, holey, old sheet'', she said.

There were red, blue and yellow stage lights set up on the mattress, a movie projector and a stack of pornographic magazines. For 5½ hours, as a radio played in the background, occasionally giving updates on the time, Garrido raped Ms Callaway. He insisted she drink some wine and smoke some hash.

As the radio announcer said it was 2.38am, someone banged on the door of the shed. Garrido pulled on his jeans and boots, and went outside.

Reno police officer Clifford Conrad was standing outside. Conrad began to question Garrido when Ms Callaway poked her head out from behind the plastic sheeting.

''Help me,'' she said, according to Officer Conrad's testimony. ''She just said, 'Help me', again and she ran out.''

She was nude and screamed that he was trying to rape her, the policeman testified, but Garrido tried to talk his way out of the jam. He implied that Ms Callaway was his girlfriend and that he was married and lived down the street.

Ms Callaway later told Mr Wade that Garrido tried to play it off like he was having sex with his girlfriend, that the officer initially thought Ms Callaway was ''crazy'' and he sent her back into the shed to get dressed. He also let Garrido follow her in.

Inside, Garrido pleaded with Ms Callaway not to tell the police what happened. She assured him she wouldn't, Mr Wade said, then ran outside and repeated that she had been raped and kidnapped.

Garrido was arrested, and in 1977 was convicted in state and federal courts. He was released after 11 years of his 50-year sentence.

Ms Callaway is now married and lives with her husband in Las Vegas, where she is known as Katherine Hall. She is speaking publicly now about her ordeal and on Tuesday was in New York for television appearances. MCT

Azerbaijani bloggers facing jail after donkey video

Two Azerbaijani bloggers face up to five years jail for posting a video of a donkey giving a press conference, the latest crackdown on the vibrant Internet of the ex-Soviet Union.

Adnan Hajizade, 26, and Emin Milli, 29, posted the satirical video on YouTube in a send-up of the Azerbaijan government and media.

Surrounded by gravely nodding journalists, the donkey (one of the bloggers in an oversized grey suit) extols the virtues of life in Azerbaijan and praises the government for its fair treatment of the four-legged beasts.

By Western standards, it was a fairly tame piece of political theatre.

But on July 8, shortly after the video was released, Hajizade and Milli were arrested after a scuffle at a restaurant in the Azerbaijani capital Baku and are being held under a two-month pre-trial detention order.

Their trial is scheduled to begin in Baku on September 4.

Authorities insist there is no political motive behind the arrests, but supporters fear it marks the beginning of a crackdown on new media and an effort to stamp out online dissent.

A lawyer for Hajizade and Milli says they were attacked by two men and arrested on hooliganism charges when they went to a local police station to file a complaint.

"This incident is definitely politically motivated. My clients did not beat anybody, quite the opposite," said the lawyer, Isakhan Ashurov.

Hajizade, the co-founder of the OL (To Be) youth movement and Milli, a co-founder of online television channel AN Network, are both Western-educated children of opposition activists who were at the centre of a growing circle of young people using the Internet to criticise Azerbaijan's authorities.

Using sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the activists posted news updates, critical essays and satirical videos, offering an alternative to Azerbaijan's mainstream television channels and newspapers, which critics allege are under strict government control.

Rights groups have repeatedly accused Azerbaijan, an oil-rich, mainly Muslim republic on the Caspian Sea, of curbing free speech and the media.

It is not the only ex-Soviet state to have come under fire for Internet restrictions. A new law in Kazakhstan allows the closing of a website for three months if it is deemed to have intentionally published illegal information.

The Azerbaijani government denies the two bloggers' arrest was politically motivated and says the incident is a simple criminal case.

"People are not arrested in Azerbaijan because of political activity.... There was a scuffle between some young people and some of them were injured," said Ali Hasanov, a senior advisor to President Ilham Aliyev.

"Law-enforcement agencies are investigating the case and will give an impartial assessment," he said.

But supporters believe there are more sinister reasons. "The reason behind this is that youth are becoming more active, especially on the Internet... and criticism of the government is increasing," said Erkin Kadirli, a member of a support group set up to defend to the bloggers.

The arrests have drawn widespread international criticism.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a July statement that the decision to hold the bloggers was "disproportionate" and "typical of arbitrary judicial decisions taken with government opponents."

The UN Human Rights Committee has also raised concerns about the arrests in a July 31 statement and condemned "extensive limitations to the right to freedom of expression" in Azerbaijan.

Experts say the arrests could silence others using the Internet to criticise the authorities.

"This incident is having a negative and restrictive effect... The arrest of Milli and Hajizade is scaring off others," said Arif Aliyev, head of Baku-based media rights group Yeni Nesil (New Generation).

But others say the move may have backfired and increased interest in alternative Azerbaijani media on the Internet.

Since the arrests, supporters have set up a wide range of websites to defend the bloggers, including a Facebook site with nearly 900 supporters and an online video petition.

"Before the arrest, only a few hundred people had seen the video of the donkey's press conference. Since the arrest the video has been seen by 11,000 people and the number continues to grow," Kadirli said. "The arrest has only promoted the video."