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May 26 China Vows Action on Trafficking2009-05-21Parents of missing children in China call for a more thorough investigation as the number of kidnappings grows. 
AFP A young Chinese girl takes a break during a dance class in Hefei, in China's central Anhui province July 9, 2006. HONG KONG—China says it has rescued more than 400 kidnapped women and children from human-trafficking gangs during a crackdown last month, but parents of missing children say government efforts have barely scratched the surface of a growing social problem. Public security vice minister Zhang Xinfeng vowed last week to extend the anti-trafficking campaign, which ran from April 9-May 4, calling on police at all levels to seek more information from the public in missing persons cases. He said police had already rescued 196 children and 214 women during the campaign and broken up 72 human-trafficking rings, mostly in Guizhou, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Henan, and Shanxi provinces, the official Xinhua news agency reported. But parents in the southern city of Nanning said 200 children were still missing in their region, and police had prevented parents from staging a public protest to draw attention to the problem. "On the day we planned to hold the protest, the police kept watch at the bus terminal and intercepted us," said a parent of a missing child surnamed Mo.
Mo, who is a member of a nongovernment group set up to support parents of missing children, said police figures from last month's campaign were suspect. "Those are all old cases," he said of the reported success stories. "They were reported a long time ago." "They re-reported the found children," Mo said. "We have several hundred missing children in the Alliance but not one has been found by police." Mo said many parents who tried to report their children missing met with refusal by police even to open a case file, while local media had failed to publicize information about lost children. Southern protests Parents of missing children in the southern province of Guangdong said they were also planning further protests but faced surveillance from their neighborhood security committee. "The police dispatched the neighborhood committee to monitor us," one parent said. "Whenever we go anywhere, they will follow us." "Two days ago, a Hong Kong TV station tried to interview some parents of missing children, but had to do it secretly in a hotel. Once we contact any strangers or try to leave Dongguan, they will question us immediately," he added. Vice police chief Zhang called for the speedy completion of a nationwide DNA database to help parents and police identify trafficked children. Police departments at all levels should be ready to collect blood samples from parents whose children were confirmed missing and parents who actively ask to donate blood samples to aid investigations, he said. Blood samples should also be routinely taken from rescued children, children of unknown origin who may have been trafficked, and homeless street children, he said. Demand for children Liao Tianqi, deputy publisher of the U.S.-based Chinese-language online magazine "Observe China," said the trafficking problem was fueled by a huge demand for children in China, regardless of their source. "There is a huge market in China for children," she said. "China has a one-child policy, and yet a lot of families want to have a boy. Of course it's not just male children who are being trafficked. It's girls as well." She said boys were often sold to people as sons, while the girls ended up filling a traditional rural role, that of daughters-in-law who are raised in the same household before marriage to one of the family's sons. "With the women, they are sold to rural families as wives, and in the worst cases, young girls and women are forced into prostitution," Liao said. "Another reason is to do with [deteriorating] social morality." Paid airtime China has published a list of the top 50 most-wanted names for human trafficking, with two arrests made so far. A mother from Dongguan, in southern China's Guangdong province, said her six-month-old boy was snatched from his sister's arms just outside the family's house in November 2007. "My son was playing with my eight-year-old daughter. My daughter was holding him," the woman, surnamed Deng, said. "Then some men snatched the baby from my daughter’s arms and got away in a van with a few other men inside," she added. She said the local police had refused to support the family's plans to air a paid commercial appealing for information. "The TV station demanded a note from the police station proving that our child was really missing," Deng said. "But the police station said this was a big criminal case and as such cannot be publicized," she said. "They said it would have a bad effect on society." She said her family planned to continue protesting in the face of apparent inaction by the authorities. Parents' support groups say around 1,000 children have gone missing in recent years from Dongguan and surrounding areas, although official figures only show 400 missing child cases. Original reporting in Cantonese by Ho Shan and in Mandarin by Xi Wang. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han. May 04 Dr Pepper artifact may reveal soft drink's origin
He bought it for $200, suspecting he could resell it for five times that. Turns out, his inkling about the book's value was more spot on than he knew. The Tulsa, Okla., man eventually discovered the book came from the Waco, Texas, drugstore where Dr Pepper was invented and includes a recipe titled "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters." "I began feeling like I had a national treasure," said Waters, 59. Dr Pepper's manufacturer says the recipe is not the secret formula for the modern day soft drink, but the 8 1/2-by-15 1/2 inch book is expected to sell between $50,000 to $75,000 when it goes up for auction at Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries on May 13. "It probably has specks of the original concoction on its pages," Waters said. Waters discovered the book, its yellowed pages stained brown on the edges, underneath a wooden medicine bottle crate in a Shamrock antiques store last summer. A couple months after buying it, he took a closer look as he prepared to sell it on eBay. He noticed there were several sheets with letterheads hinting at its past, like a page from a prescription pad from a Waco store titled "W.B. Morrison & Co. Old Corner Drug Store." An Internet search revealed Dr Pepper, first served in 1885, was invented at the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco by a pharmacist named Charles Alderton. Wade Morrison was a store owner. Faded letters on the book's fraying brown cover say "Castles Formulas." John Castles was a partner of Morrison's for a time and was a druggist at that location as early as 1880, said Mary Beth Webster, collections manager at the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute in Waco. As he gathered more information, Waters took a slower turn through the book's more than 360 pages, which are filled with formulas for everything from piano polish to a hair restorer to a cough syrup. He eventually spotted the "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters" formula. "It took three or four days before I actually realized what I had there," Waters said. The recipe written in cursive in the ledger book is hard to make out, but ingredients seem to include mandrake root, sweet flag root and syrup. It isn't a recipe for a soft drink, says Greg Artkop, a spokesman for the Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group. He said it's likely instead a recipe for a bitter digestive that bears the Dr Pepper name. He said the recipe certainly bears no resemblance to any Dr Pepper recipes the company knows of. The drink's 23-flavor blend is a closely guarded secret, only known by three Dr Pepper employees, he said. Michael Riley, chief cataloger and historian for Heritage Auction Galleries, said they think it's an early recipe for Dr Pepper. "We just feel like it's the earliest version of it," he said. He hasn't, however, tested that theory by trying to mix up a batch. Neither has Waters; he's thought about it but would need to find someone to decipher all the handwriting. Jack McKinney, executive director of the Waco museum, surmised that Alderton might have been giving customers something for their stomachs and added some Dr Pepper syrup to make it taste better. "I don't guess there's any definitive answer. It's got to be the only one of its kind," Riley said. McKinney said the ledger book was bound to be popular with Dr Pepper collectors because it's from the time the drink was invented. Riley said the book was probably started around 1880 and used through the 1890s. It's not known who wrote the Dr Pepper recipe in the book, but they don't think it was the handwriting of Alderton or Morrison. Some of the formulas have Alderton's name after them. At first, Alderton's drink inspired by the smells in the drugstore was called "a Waco." "People would come in and say, 'Shoot me a Waco,'" Riley said. Soon renamed Dr Pepper, the drink caught on and other stores in town began selling it. Eventually, Alderton got out of the Dr Pepper business and Morrison and a man named Robert Lazenby started a bottling company in 1891. Flipping through the pages of the ledger book takes one back to a time when drugstores were neighborhood hubs, selling everything from health remedies to beauty products mixed up by the stores' chemists. And among the formulas being mixed up in drugstores were treats for the soda fountain. A two-page spread in Waters' book has recipes for "Soda Water Syrups," including pineapple, lemon and strawberry. "There were very few national brands," Riley said. "Their lifeblood was all their formulas." April 27 Gov't advises against unnecessary travel to Mexico
Dr. Richard Besser made the disclosure during a news conference in Atlanta, saying the advisory was being released "out of an abundance of caution." Besser also reported 40 confirmed cases of swine flu in the United States, including 20 in New York City. He said people can help keep the disease from spreading by taking everyday precautions such as frequent handwashing, covering up coughs and sneezes, and staying away from work or school if they're not feeling well. Before the CDC changed its advice to travelers, U.S. airlines were reporting that some passengers have already changed or canceled their plans to fly to Mexico. Spokespeople for US Airways, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines said Monday passengers have requested travel changes, but none of the carriers would say how many. The three airlines said their operations are proceeding as normal and they have not canceled any flights to Mexico as a result of the scare. "The loads are a little bit less than they normally would be for this time of day, but we are not seeing mass bookings away," said Michelle Mohr, a spokeswoman for US Airways. The carrier does not fly nonstop from Europe to Mexico, but it does offer European travelers the ability to connect to Mexico through U.S. airports. The top European Union health official urged Europeans on Monday to postpone nonessential travel to parts of the United States and Mexico because of the swine flu virus. American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith said his carrier has not had a lot of requests for travel changes, though there have been some. Delta continues to follow CDC and government agency recommendations, spokesman Anthony Black said. "We have seen minimal changes to customer bookings," he said. Several airlines are allowing passengers to change their travel plans to or from Mexico without any fee or penalty. Airline stocks, meanwhile, were pummeled Monday. Shares of Delta, US Airways and American parent AMR Corp. were down double-digit or high single-digit percentages in midday trading in New York. Merrill Lynch analyst Michael Linenberg said in a research note Monday that news of Mexico's outbreak of deadly swine flu is likely to pressure U.S. airline stocks in the near-term as investors fear a replaying of Asia's SARS episode, which impacted the global sector in the spring of 2003. "Airlines with large international operations, especially to/from Mexico, are likely to be perceived by the market as having the most downside risk in the event that the swine flu becomes a pandemic," Linenberg said. April 23 Chewing gum may raise maths grades in teensCHICAGO (Reuters) – In a study likely to make school janitors cringe, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday that chewing gum may boost academic performance in teenagers. Many U.S. schools ban chewing gum because children often dispose of the sticky chaw under chairs or tables. But a team led by Craig Johnston at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston found that students who chewed gum during math class had higher scores on a standardized math test after 14 weeks and better grades at the end of the term than students in the class who did not chew gum. The study was funded by chewing gum maker Wrigley. "For the first time we've been able to show in a real-life kind of situation that students did perform better when they were allowed to chew," said Gil Leveille, executive director of the Wrigley Science Institute, a research arm of Wm Wrigley Jr, which is now a part of Mars. Leveille said Wrigley has gotten feedback from many of its gum customers who say chewing gum helps them stay focussed. So, four years ago the company started the science institute to see if some of these claims have merit. The researchers at Baylor studied four math classes or 108 students aged 13 to 16 years old from a Houston, Texas, charter school that serves mostly low-income Hispanic students. About half got free Wrigley's sugar-free gum to chew during class, homework and tests. They chewed at least one stick of gum 86 percent of the time they were in math class and 36 percent of the time they were doing homework. The other half went without. After 14 weeks, the gum chewers had a three percent increase in their math scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills achievement test, a small but statistically significant change, according to Johnston and colleagues, who presented their findings at the American Society for Nutrition scientific meeting in New Orleans. They found no difference in math scores between the two groups in another test called the Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement. However, the gum-chewers did get better final grades in the class than their non-chewing peers. Another Wrigley-funded study found that college students in a lab who were given difficult computer tasks had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol when they were chewing gum compared to when they were not. Leveille said he thinks chewing gum helps reduce stress so students can do their best work. And while he is aware that many schools have a dim view of students chewing gum in class, he hopes the findings may change that a bit. "It's not a matter of chewing. It's a matter of gum disposal," Leveille said, adding that that can be overcome by teaching proper disposal behaviours. If that fails, he quipped, "We'll have to provide the janitors with scrapers." April 22 A scary nightIt was a dark and stormy night. I was about to go to bed when I heard a tapping sound on my window.
I peeped out of my blanket but it was too dark to see anything. Then I heard footsteps. They were getting louder and louder. It was dark but I knew the way to my drawer where I kept my camera. I ran there and took out my camera and started to take pictures in the direction of the window. Soon the footsteps died off.
When I reached home I told my father the whole incident and he started to laugh. I started laughing too when he told me that he had dressed up as an alien for the party. Today, I am still amused to think I was so afraid of my own father. |
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DALLAS – Poking through antiques stores while traveling through the 
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