China's plane ambitions take off

by Michael Bristow

China Aviation Industry Corporation I (AVIC I) is probably not a name that has executives at Boeing and Airbus quaking in their boots.

But the Chinese aircraft maker is currently assembling a regional passenger jet that it hopes will establish China as a major plane manufacturer.

The ARJ21 - which stands for Advanced Regional Jet for the 21st Century - is due to have its first test flight in March next year.

China believes this could be the start of a trend that will see the country build its own jumbo jets in the near future.

AVIC I, a state-run consortium based in Shanghai, says the regional plane is China's first independently developed passenger jet, although it will have engines made by US firm General Electric.

The plane, a model of which was on display at an aviation trade show in Beijing last month, has been primarily built for the Chinese market. It has also been designed to cope with the high temperatures and high altitude runways it will encounter in China's western regions.

State-run media report that 71 ARJ21s, which will initially have 70 to 90 seats, have already been sold to domestic airlines, such as Shanghai Airlines. Other deals are pending.

These aircraft will be delivered from the end of 2009. A slightly larger version of the ARJ21, with 150 seats, will be produced later.

Expanding market

There will certainly be demand for more aircraft from China. In its latest forecast, Boeing said China would require 3,400 new planes worth about $340 billion over the next 20 years.

It expects China's domestic market to grow nearly fivefold by 2026, which will make it slightly larger than today's intra-North American market.

"Over the forecast period, China will have the fastest-growing market, making it the largest market outside of the US for new commercial airplanes," Boeing said. With an expanding market, China is keen to develop its own manufacturing industry for passenger aircraft. Li Zhiyong, from AVIC I's marketing and sales department, said: "At the moment, all aircraft that fly in China are made abroad so, sooner or later, China must produce its own planes."

But he added that the ultimate aim was to sell the ARJ21 abroad.

The firm already appears to have had some success. There are reports that Lao Airlines is considering buying two of the jets, becoming the plane's first foreign customer.

But, speaking at the Aviation Expo/China 2007, Mr Li said the most important hurdle had yet to be overcome.

"We have to get test flight licences from either Europe or the United States. This will allow us to sell the plane abroad more easily," he said.

Building expertise

AVIC I obviously hopes its plane will be a commercial success, but China does not hide the fact that the project has another role - to give technicians experience for future, larger projects.

"This is a big project for them," says Tom Ballantyne, of Orient Aviation magazine based in Hong Kong. "They are really hoping this will kick off airline production in China."

Earlier this year, the Chinese government confirmed that it wanted to build its own jumbo jets by 2020.

It believes it now has the expertise, and economic strength, to build a large passenger plane. China also appears to think that, as one of the world's largest nations, it ought to have its own aircraft manufacturing industry.

"A home-made large aircraft may inspire the nation like the country's manned spacecraft program," said Liu Daxiang, from AVIC I's science and technology development department. Mr Ballantyne agrees that China should be able to produce jumbo jets in the coming decades, but he says it might be difficult persuading airlines to buy the planes.

"One of the problems in China is that even Chinese airlines do not want to buy China's own planes," he said.

Boeing and Airbus, it appears, are not going to face any serious Chinese competitor any time soon.

BBC News

Musharraf appoints army successor

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has named his successor to take over as army chief, the military says.

The appointee is former head of intelligence Lt Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, military spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad told the BBC.

Gen Musharraf will resign as head of the army if he wins presidential elections on Saturday, his lawyers say.

Opposition parties say his candidacy is illegal and that he has broken previous promises to resign as army chief.

Lt Gen Kiani has been appointed deputy chief of army staff and will take over the top post when it falls vacant, the military says.

It is not clear when that will be.

Gen Musharraf's lawyers told the Supreme Court last week that he would stand down as army chief "soon after election and before taking the oath of office as president".

Lt Gen Kiani has taken part in recent secret talks on a possible power sharing deal between President Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

His appointment came as current Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz met senior cabinet members to discuss measures which could see corruption charges against Ms Bhutto dropped.

Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim said proposals to amnesty politicians who had been accused, but not convicted, of corruption in cases up to 1999 were in "the final stages".

"We hope that this ordinance may be promulgated as early as tomorrow," he told the Associated Press.

Lt Gen Kiani headed Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency from 2004 until last month. The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Karachi says he earned Gen Musharraf's confidence when he headed the investigation into two attempts on the president's life in December 2003, bringing a number of suspects to trial in a secret military court.

Lt Gen Kiani's appointment will be closely watched in Washington which has been putting pressure on Pakistan to do more in the US-led "war on terror".

News of his promotion came as scores of opposition MPs resigned from Pakistan's national parliament and provincial assemblies in protest at Saturday's presidential election.

They insist that President Pervez Musharraf is ineligible to stand.

Correspondents say that the resignations make it even more certain that Gen Musharraf will win the vote.

Members who resigned from the assemblies on Tuesday were drawn mainly from an alliance of Islamic parties, the MMA, and the PML-N party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the country's biggest party, is not taking part in the boycott.

Meanwhile two rival candidates for Saturday's election have filed fresh petitions in the Supreme Court against Gen Musharraf's candidacy, saying he is not eligible to stand while also remaining head of the army.

Last Friday the court dismissed a number of petitions, in a move seen as a major victory for the president.

The president is elected by MPs from the national assembly and Pakistan's four provincial assemblies.

BBC

Diana and Dodi inquest to begin

The inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al Fayed will open in full later at London's High Court.

A jury will be sworn in for the hearing, which could last six months.

The final 11 jurors will be chosen by ballot from a shortlist of a potential 25. Throughout the case, jurors will be escorted to and from court by police.

The princess and Mr Al Fayed died in a car crash in the Pont d'Alma tunnel, in Paris, on 31 August 1997.

Some 227 candidates for jury service were summoned by letter to London's Royal Courts of Justice last Thursday, but only 80 turned up.

The 80 were handed a list of 10 questions ordering them to reveal any connections to the Royal Family, Dodi's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, or the security services.

During Thursday's proceedings, coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker said the deaths of Princess Diana and Mr Al Fayed had "created worldwide interest on an unprecedented scale".

"Millions of words have been spoken and written. There are numerous books, television programmes, articles that have been published, some by those who are closely involved in surrounding events and some not," the coroner said.

But jurors would be required to come to a decision based only on court evidence, he added.

"If there are any articles in the newspapers, do not read them, and if there are any television programmes about the death of Diana or any news items about these inquests, you should not look at them," he told the 80 candidates.

In the second week of the hearing, the jury will be flown to Paris to retrace Diana's final journey.

Of the 25 potential jurors chosen for Tuesday's ballot, 15 are women and 10 are men.

BBC

Linguists gutted by body-talk blight

Traditional expressions are dying out as thought patterns change:

by RAJU THAKRAR

Imagine a nation of people who no longer know where their center lies. That's what Japan has become in recent decades.

One of the major casualties of the Japanese language's rapid and ongoing evolution is the diminishing use of body-related phrases - a phenomenon that reflects how Japanese people's once-visceral connection between their bodies and minds is these days rapidly attenuating.

Although it is of course fallacious to generalize, people past working age nowadays tend to have a far better perception of their bodies than their younger contemporaries. Evidence of this is clear in the kind of language they use.

Well-known writer and Meiji University literature professor Takashi Saito, 47, states in his book "Karada Kankaku wo Torimodosu (Restoring Your Body's Feeling)" (2000) that "people in their 80s and 90s use relatively more phrases that include the word hara (stomach) than people of younger generations."

Nowadays, ask a Japanese person where their soul is, and they will probably respond by either pointing to their head or heart. But there was a time when Japanese people believed their soul resided in their hara. This is not really surprising, as the area around the stomach is the physical center of gravity of the human body, and thus in mechanical terms the center of a person's being.

In romantic days of yore, for example, samurai and others would commit suicide in a gruesome manner by slicing themselves open across this key body area in a terminal rite termed hara-kiri (belly cut) that served to show the world their soul.

However, Japanese do not own the copyright on this line of thinking. In English, too, there are various phrases that make use of this central part of the body.

To "have the guts to do something" is to have the resolution to carry out something difficult or unpleasant; and when a person feels something acutely, they will say "I feel it in the pit of my stomach."

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Cellphone bards hit bestseller lists If two cultures as different as Britain's and Japan's both place importance on the same part of the body, it suggests there may be some kind of universal significance lurking there.

In Japanese, many other terms using hara still exist. There is, for example, hara wo kimeru, literally meaning "decide in your stomach," which denotes that you have made a firm resolution. Then there's hara-guroi, literally meaning "black stomach," an adjectival phrase for someone who is evil-minded.

Meanwhile, when you want to know what a poker-faced person is really thinking, in Japan you would be well advised to indulge in a little hara o saguru, meaning "looking for the stomach." A less commonly used phrase - and one that is particularly hard to translate into English - is hara ga dekite iru, which literally means, "stomach is complete" but has nothing to do with having a finely chiseled six-pack.

On this point, Saito says: " 'Hara ga dekite iru' refers to having a calm mind even in times of urgency - meaning someone who is able to deal with any situation calmly." To put this in its cultural context, he explained: "In the past in Japan, training in Zen or the martial arts strengthened your spirit and allowed you to keep your presence of mind even in the face of death."

So many linguistic gems are in danger of extinction in Japan these days as people cease to use marvelously evocative old expressions relating to their bodies.

Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, however, and the abolition of the samurai system and the Westernization of lifestyles, there was a sharp decline in Japan's "body culture," of which hara had been the central focus. This mass spurning of traditional ways then became even more pronounced after World War II, when Japanese by their millions shunned their age-old traditions.

Nowadays, according to Saito, the reality is that Japanese people have forsaken their time-honored ways of using "body language" - "because they have not realized its value." Nonetheless, there are still plenty of Japanese phrases in daily use whose approximate meaning people will know, even though they may lack any deeper understanding.

For example, there's fu ni ochinai (literally, something "doesn't fall into the bowels"). Few are aware that the kanji (Chinese character) used here for fu is the one meaning a person's intestines, and the place where their thoughts reside.

Thus, in fu ni ochinai, something just doesn't quite fall into place or make sense. Similarly, the verb neru is now rarely used by young people in their everyday lives. Most people know it as meaning "to knead" (think dough), but it originally refers to a process whereby a lot of strength is applied to soften something such as cloth, metal or earth.

Yet again, there was a time when people would solve a problem by putting it into their hara, expressed as hara ni shimau, and work on it there - or, as in hara o neru, they'd simply "chew it over."

But is there really no place in modern Japanese for these body-related expressions? I for one will not be able to stomach it if they completely go the way of the dinosaurs.

Imagine a nation of people who no longer know where their spiritual or gravitational center lies.

At present, such wisdom - as the language evolves in an increasingly denaturing way - has primarily become the preserve of the elderly, with younger generations losing that once-solid connection between body and mind.

As an English soccer manager might say in such circumstances: "I'm gutted."

Japan Times

Israeli village brings hope for 'lost' youth

When Adam arrived at Yemin Orde Youth Village as a frightened and bewildered 17-year-old, in June 2006, it was the end of one long journey and the start of another.

by Raffi Berg

His odyssey began four years earlier when Janjaweed militiamen attacked his village in Darfur, Sudan, sending him fleeing for his life.

Alone and separated from his family, Adam trekked from one village to another, eluding rebels, sleeping rough and spending time in jail, before escaping to Egypt.

One night, in Sinai, he says, he saw the twinkling lights of Israel and simply walked across the border. He was arrested, jailed again, then sent to live on a kibbutz.

While there, his plight came to the attention of Dr Chaim Peri, the 66-year-old director of Yemin Orde, who arranged his transfer to the village.

Just one year on, Adam, a Muslim, is a happy, well-adjusted student, who has excelled in the study of robotics.

"The children who come here are not necessarily Jewish, but we believe all children who reach the shores of Israel are our business," says Dr Peri, who, as a baby, was himself placed in a children's home.

For the past 54 years, the business of Yemin Orde has been to provide a home and a future to abandoned and at-risk children from around the world.

At present there are some 500 residents in the village from about 20 countries as diverse as Sudan, Guinea and China, each with a story like Adam's.

'Family for life'

Situated on a peak on the Carmel mountain range, the 77-acre village is an oasis of tranquillity, a vital ingredient in the healing of children scarred by years of conflict and abuse.

Named after Orde Charles Wingate, the controversial British army officer who trained Jewish underground forces in the 1930s, the centre provides a safe refuge, education and life skills for destitute children from the age of five, through adolescence and up to the age of 19, and, in some cases, beyond.

"We don't expel kids from here. Period," says Dr Peri. "While only one in 10 graduates stay on, those who leave know that we're always here for them, like a normal family."

It is an ethos which resonates with those who have passed through Yemin Orde's doors. Some return to get married here, while others stop by to visit or stay to mentor newcomers.

In the village dining hall - which doubles as the venue for community weddings - the sound of chatter and hubbub fills the air.

Here the village's multicultural character is most visible, as children of all races and religions sit together and eat.

"It's as international a community as there can be," says Dr Peri. "It epitomises Israel."

The Israeli state refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes within the country's pre-1967 borders, arguing such a move would threaten Israel's survival as a Jewish state.

It is a policy which Dr Peri supports. "We embrace Muslim kids here, wherever they come from, but I cannot come up with any positive statement in terms of the 'right of return' for Palestinian refugees," he says. "It's a new reality now and refugees have resettled all over the world. We are in the business of survival."

Hard times

Outside, the midday sun beats down on the verdant grounds, where the children live in some 20 whitewashed, red-roofed homes - the boys on one side, the girls on another.

The living quarters are named after historical figures, such as Aristotle, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln.

"Our mission is to take kids from the margins of society and take them to the margins of leadership," says Susan Weijel, a village official.

"Our only expectation from them is that they give back to society."

The village, which depends financially on benefactors from around the world, is well-equipped, with two schools, science and computer laboratories, a swimming pool, gymnasium and a synagogue.

There is also a small shop, but the children are free to come and go to the shopping centres of Haifa, just 10 minutes' drive away.

In the summer of 2006, however, Yemin Orde's proximity to Israel's main northern city was far from convenient, when Israel went to war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

"Two weeks before the war, a family of brothers and sisters from the former Soviet Union arrived at Yemin Orde. They kept having to run to the shelter in a place where we'd told them they'd be safe," says Ms Weijel

BBC