* Insurgencies, fear of China deters development

* Smuggling dominates trade on India-Myanmar border

* Area was meant to be bridge to Southeast Asia

*

By Satarupa Bhattacharjya and Frank Jack Daniel

MOREH, India, Feb 22 (Reuters) – As dusk falls on a
lonely police station in the eastern tip of India, a young
policeman nervously keeps an eye on the Arakan hills above him,
dotted with poppy fields.

Just 22 bumpy miles from the capital of India’s restive
Manipur state, he and his colleagues are outnumbered by gunmen
from a faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland,
one of half a dozen insurgent groups operating near India’s
border with Myanmar.

Last year, six policemen were killed a few miles
away in an ambush authorities blamed on them.

Small groups of men with machetes on their belts can be seen
in the winter twilight, openly climbing steep paths through the
poppy fields, where valuable seed heads will later be harvested
and taken to Myanmar for processing into heroin.

“There are many poppy fields in the hills here,” the
policeman said in a hushed voice, refusing to give his name to
Reuters for fear of reprisals from the men he said were armed
rebels patrolling the fields above his office. Growers will
either sell the seed heads to agents or openly in the local
market , he said.

Opium and insurgency can make for a profitable if exotic
business model, but it is not what India had in mind when it
launched its “Look East” policy 20 years ago to link its markets
to those of booming Southeast Asia.

Now as resource-rich Myanmar emerges from decades of
isolation under military rule, India should be a natural
partner, with ties stretching back to 3rd Century BC Buddhist
emperor Ashoka and, more recently, a shared experience of
British colonialism and World War Two.

BRIDGE TO SOUTHEAST ASIA

“Myanmar is India’s only bridge to Southeast Asia,” Myo
Myint, Myanmar’s deputy foreign minister, told Reuters last week
at a meeting of Southeast Asian diplomats in New Delhi to look
at ways to speed up road, rail and telecoms connections with
India. “India needs to come forward with assistance.”

Myanmar sits at Asia’s crossroads, sharing a western border
with India, and a northern one with China. Thailand is its
neighbour to the east and the Malacca Strait is on its southern
flank.

The country of nearly 60 million people has emerged from a
half-century of military rule and is courting the West while
trying to wean itself from dependency on China for trade and
investment. But despite a recent flurry of high-level visits
between the two countries, India appears ill-placed on the
ground to exploit Myanmar’s opening.

Reuters journalists on a recent trip to the Myanmar-India
border in Manipur found a region where rebel groups deeply
influence politics and business. Opium poppies are grown openly.
Cross-border gun-running remains big business.

Manipur and the three other Indian states sharing the 1,640-
km (1,020-mile) border with Myanmar were supposed to be India’s
“Gateway to the East”. Instead, the area has become India’s Wild
East.

Legal trade on the border has dwindled in the last five
years to just 0.15 percent of total commerce between Myanmar and
India. Checkpoints by security forces and rebel group supporters
make the 120 km (75 mile) journey along rutted Highway 102
through the hills from Manipur’s capital Imphal to Moreh on the
border a painstakingly slow — and expensive, too, from the
“taxes” they impose on traffic.

NO CRIME HERE

The sleepy border town of Moreh had dreams of being a major
international trading centre, a key station on the ambitious
Trans-Asia Railway that will enable containers from East and
Southeast Asia to travel overland across India to Europe.

But work on the $900 million, 125 km (77 mile) stretch of
the railway is already two years behind schedule and has only
progressed a short distance. Costs are soaring.

At first glance, Moreh seems to be a quiet bazaar of
traditional wooden stilt houses, frontier hotels and stores
where Myanmarese Buddhist monks and tribespeople in traditional
dress and sandal-paste painted faces mingle with traders from
across India.

The town of 15,000 people has one bank.

“There is no crime here,” acting police chief Akbar Hussein
said, chewing on a lump of betel nut at his outdoor desk. “There
was only one case registered this month, and that was a road
accident.”

Opened in 1995 to great fanfare, the Moreh crossing was
supposed to be a major trading post by now. Only some
small-scale merchants conduct legal trade. Much of that is on a
barter system, exchanging flour and soy products for betel, a
mild stimulant popular in India.

Despite the police chief’s boast, Moreh is a major smuggling
centre where outlaws move around freely. Heroin from the Golden
Triangle, guns and gem stones go westward; raw opium, tiger
bones and rhino horn move east.

“Since 1995, nothing substantial has taken place. The border
area is like a 17th-century tribal village,” said N. Mohindro,
an expert on trade in the state. “It’s all about drugs and guns.
People can make money so easily.”

Some of this business is in the hands of Indian insurgents
who run their operations from the Myanmar side of the border.
Several of Myanmar’s own rebel groups are also based in the
area.

A U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006 released by Wikileaks
described local politicians either in league with the rebels or
supporting them for financial reasons.

Local residents say security forces are also deeply involved
in trafficking but a senior officer of the police intelligence
branch in Imphal denies that.

“The dense forest cover in this open border region is a
nightmare for us,” the officer said,” the officer said of an
unfenced 63 mile stretch running from Moreh, adding that “the
easy availability of weapons inside Myanmar has worsened the
situation”.

IMAGINARY ROAD

It wasn’t always this way. Until the early 1990s, Myanmarese
flocked across the border to buy Indian-made consumer goods. But
as China’s workshops cranked up and offered cheaper, more
durable products, the market shifted to the other side of the
fence.

Now, traders from Manipur’s capital Imphal endure the
serpentine journey along bumpy Highway 102 and its checkpoint
shakedowns to visit the Namphalong bazaar on the Myanmar side of
the Moreh border gate.

Their pick-up trucks are piled high with Chinese mattresses,
refrigerators and TVs to sell back in India, returning along the
same road that brought Japanese troops in World War Two through
then Burma in an attempt to invade India. The trip from the
border to Imphal carrying such contraband can involve payoffs
along the way amounting to several hundred dollars.

Highway 102 was supposed to be part of a road network
linking up with Mandalay, Myanmar’s main city in the North, and
on into Thailand. But the only notable improvement on the Indian
side is a short patch running through the Manipur chief
minister’s home town.

“People had plans to open eateries, motels and shops along
the Asian highway. Now, the trans-national road is imaginary. It
does not exist here,” said Lunminthang Haokip, a senior state
government official for Moreh’s Chandel district. “The Look East
policy is no more than power-point presentations in Delhi.”

The complaint is voiced often here by residents in Manipur
who have suffered decades of rights abuses under draconian
emergency powers including “shoot-to-kill” orders aimed at
curtailing the insurgencies. Residents say New Delhi acts like a
colonial power, with much of its mistrust of the region stemming
from its relative proximity to China.

“The overwhelming presence of military, paramilitary and
police officers contributed to the impression that Imphal was
under military occupation,” the U.S. embassy cable said. “The
Indian civil servants were also clearly frustrated with their
inability to stem the growing violence and anarchy in the state,
feeling their efforts to effectively control the insurgencies
was hamstrung by local politicians either in league with or at
least through corruption, helping to finance the insurgents.”

India, which fought a border war in 1962 with China, has
watched with mounting concern as Beijing steadily increases its
influence around the rim of the Indian Ocean.

“You can’t leave the whole region under an iron curtain just
because they look Chinese,” said rights activist Babloo
Loitongbam, in a restaurant left dark by one of the chronic
power cuts in Imphal. “You have to constantly prove you are not
anti-national.

Ten years ago India’s foreign minister proposed reopening a
World War Two highway to the north of Manipur called the
Stilwell Road, which connects India’s far eastern region, known
as the Northeast, with Myanmar and China.

Worried that the road risked strengthening China’s influence
and the flow of militants and arms to the region, India dragged
its feet and Myanmar turned to China’s Yunnan Construction
Engineering Group instead. India also missed out on the natural
gas from two fields in Myanmar it has a stake in, when the
government chose to pipe it to China.

During long years of self-imposed isolation, Myanmar’s only
major economic partner was China. India realised in the 1990s
that Chinese investment in Myanmar’s military and infrastructure
was giving Beijing a strategic advantage in a nation that
borders five countries, straddles busy Bay of Bengal shipping
lanes and has large oil and gas reserves.

New Delhi quietly dropped its backing for the opposition
party of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who went to
school and university in India.

Ties have strengthened since then, with President Thein Sein
just the latest of Myanmar’s leaders to call on New Delhi on a
visit to India last year.

Rajiv Bhatia, who was India’s ambassador to Myanmar until
2005. says India is still more concerned with its South Asian
neighbours, including Bangladesh and Pakistan, and could miss
the moment.

“In pure geopolitical terms, Myanmar is hugely important to
India. We are now getting a historic opportunity to recover our
relationship,” he said. ” But it is still not a
priority for our politicians.”

(Editing by John Chalmers and Bill Tarrant)

Contraceptives, religious freedom: Are we in a new culture war?Brianna Keilar and Eric Marrapodi ("CNN," February 17, 2012)

Washington, USA – Welcome to the culture wars 2.0, where the front lines now are religious freedom and contraceptives. Abortion? Gay marriage? Those are so last year.

The White House seems to have assuaged the concerns of liberal and moderate religious voices, particularly Catholics, who complained that the U.S. Health and Human Services mandate on contraceptive coverage violated religious freedom of conscience. The policy now includes a wide exemption for religious groups; requires insurance companies, instead of religious employers, to foot the bill; and still includes a year to hammer out the details.

But now, the issue is firmly entrenched in a political battle on Capitol Hill. Republicans are seizing on the issue as an opportunity to push back on the Affordable Care Act, which they gleefully call “Obamacare.” Democrats, meanwhile, are punching back, saying that rolling back the mandate is a slap in the face to women and that this is exclusively a women’s health issue.

Political shots were fired from both sides at a Thursday hearing convened by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The hearing, titled “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” featured conservative religious voices from across the spectrum, most of whom were male.

“Today’s hearing is a solemn one. It involves freedom of conscience,” Issa said at the beginning of the hearing.

The Most Rev. William Lori, the Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, testified on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which denounced the compromise last week, saying it still raised “serious moral concerns.”

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, testified: “The administration impedes religious liberty by unilaterally redefining what it means to be religious.”

Craig Mitchell, an associate professor from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the HHS policy, “… is not just wrong for religious conservatives, it’s wrong for all Americans.”

The Democratic women on the committee slammed Republicans for not allowing a female witness on the first panel — a Georgetown University law school student chosen by Democrats to appear in support of the policy.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, took offense to the overwhelming majority of men on the witness list. “I want to know — where are the women?” she asked.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., raised her voice against Issa’s lineup. “We’ve been denied the right to have a witness!”

Two women invited by the Republicans — Dr. Laura Champion and Allison Dabbs Garrett — later testified during a second panel in the afternoon.

The Obama administration has largely satisfied moderate and liberal Catholics whose objections to the policy prompted the change. They point to religious groups like Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association, which initially opposed the HHS mandate but now support the compromise.

“The president’s accommodation both recognizes the institution’s religious identity while also maintaining affordable health care for all Americans,” James Salt, the executive director of Catholics United, told CNN. Salt was part of the driving force of liberal Catholic groups that pushed the White House hard to make the change to the policy.

If the fight with moderate and liberal religious voices has ended, the battle on Capitol Hill continues. Both sides are appealing to their bases, with Republicans seeing an opportunity to chip away at the president’s signature health care reform law. They have proposed legislation in the in the Senate and the House to repeal the contraception policy and allow any employer — not just religiously affiliated ones — to reject the requirement.

On Wednesday, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Nebraska, said at a news conference on the new bills, “No American should be forced to choose between their faith and their job.”

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who led the charge in Congress to pass Obama’s health care bill when she was speaker, said the issue was about women’s access to health care. “Imagine, they’re having a panel on women’s health and they don’t have any women on the panel. Duh. What is it that men don’t understand about women’s health and how central the issue of family planning is to that?”

“The Catholic vote, in particular those moderate Catholics in the middle who can swing one way or the other, they are always highly sought-after political prizes,” said John Allen, a CNN Vatican analyst and reporter for the National Catholic Reporter.

“Forty-five percent of those Catholics are going to vote for the Democrat no matter what, and 45% of the Catholics are going to vote for the Republican no matter what. So the game is always for those 10% of Catholics in the middle. But of course, you’re talking about a pool of people over the age of 18 who are eligible to vote, of about 4 million people, and they tend to be heavily concentrated in states that are battleground states, places like Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the Southwest, Texas and so on,” Allen said.

“There’s a thick political subtext here, which is both Republicans and Democrats would like to define the other side as hostile to the interest of those centrist Catholics who could swing either way,” he said.

Senior Obama administration officials say they are confident they have assuaged the concerns of those middle-of-the-road Catholics and were not aiming to win over Catholics and other religious leaders because they say nothing would have appeased them short of a complete reversal of the policy.

But one thing is for sure: This issue is not going away.

People across New Zealand have been holding memorial services to remember the 185 people who died in a powerful earthquake in Christchurch a year ago.

At a ceremony at North Hagley Park in Christchurch, tens of thousands gathered for a solemn and tearful memorial.

Family members of the victims were seen joining arms and bowing their heads during the ceremony that included songs and speeches.

Governor General Jerry Mateparae read a message of condolence from Prince Charles, while a video from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was played.

"Even those if us who were far away on that terrible day share your grief and we know it's been a struggle," she said. "But through that struggle we've seen the strength and perseverance of the people of Christchurch."

Earlier, a memorial was held in Christchurch's Latimer Square for families of the victims. Children released 185 monarch butterflies at the park in memory of those who died.

Speaking in the city, the prime minister said it had been one of New Zealand's darkest days.

"People were huddled under blankets, sirens were blaring, and dust and smoke was thick in the air," he told mourners in the square, which was used as a makeshift medical centre on the day of the quake.

"There were fires, helicopters with monsoon buckets hovering overhead."

Rebuilding efforts

Ahead of the anniversary, Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker told the BBC that "the big task of rebuilding is just getting under way now".

"It has been a massive job and continues to be so," he said of recovery efforts.

Immediately after the quake, it was believed that up to 10,000 homes would have to be demolished and 100,000 would need repairs.

"In terms of where we have got to so far, there are many thousands of residential homes that needed to be examined," Mr Parker said.

"New areas for residential growth opened up because we realised that some pieces of land were no longer suitable for people to live in. They were just unable to be strengthened in the appropriate way and we want to be the safest city in the world.

"So any decisions that we make have to be well-judged decisions around the safety of land and the safety of buildings."

Almost two-thirds of the deaths during the quake happened when the six-story Canterbury Television (CTV) building collapsed.

Those killed included people of many different nationalities because there was a language school in the building.

An official report from the Department of Building and Housing released on 9 February stated that it did not meet requirements when it was built in 1986. The load-bearing columns were not sufficiently reinforced with steel, it said.

After the quake struck, it was thought that people would start leaving New Zealand's second-largest city.

According to Mr Parker, only 10,000 of the base population of 500,000 have actually left. He sees this as "the greatest vote of confidence".

The city is now recruiting thousands of skilled workers to fuel its NZ$30bn ($24.4bn) rebuilding effort.

The area is frequently hit by tremors, with major quakes striking the city in June and December last year.

Six months before the devastating quake, the region was shaken by a 7.1-magnitude quake, but that did not cause major destruction.

<span class="articleLocation”>(Reuters) – TriQuint Semiconductor Inc unveiled a dual-band power amplifier duplexer, dubbed the world’s smallest, to tap the surge in demand for 3G and 4G smartphones.

The new Tritium Duo module combines two power amplifiers and duplexers (PADs) in a single compact module, replacing up to 12 discrete components and freeing up space in a smartphone.

“We are sampling it now with a lot of our key customers,” Shane Smith, vice president, mobile devices global marketing, told Reuters.

TriQuint, which counts HTC Corp, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, Nokia and Research In Motion among its customers, is sampling the new module with customers like Samsung Electronics, Smith said.

Smith hopes to start shipping the new modules in good volumes by August and expects addition to revenue from the third quarter.

Tritium PADs are a family of highly integrated modules designed for use in mobile phones, data cards and USB modems.

The new module, which will save at least 25 percent space compared to rival products, is expected to help mobile device manufacturers to include more features or larger batteries in thinner, lighter smartphones.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Dubai: Three men have been accused of kidnapping two brothers and assaulting them with sharp tools to force one of them to admit that he stole birds.

Prosecutors accused the three Emirati men, A.J., A.G. and N.M., of tricking the Pakistani brothers and kidnapping them to an unpopulated sandy area.

Then the suspects attacked the brothers with swords, knives and wooden bars to force the elder brother, 27-year-old A.M., to confess that he stole A.J.’s birds.

N.M. failed to appear before the Dubai Court of First Instance.

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The driver of a coach that crashed in France, killing a teacher, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Derek Thompson, 47, who prosecutors said had earlier admitted that he could not remember the accident, appeared before a magistrate on Monday evening.

Peter Rippington, 59, who taught at Alvechurch School, Worcestershire, died and more than 20 people were hurt in Sunday's crash near Rheims.

The school party had been returning from a skiing trip in Italy.

According to the Foreign Office, seven people remain in hospital, including a 13-year-old girl who underwent surgery in Paris.

Mr Thompson was behind the wheel of the coach when it went down an embankment on the A26 motorway near Rheims at about 02:30 GMT.

Prosecutor Christian de Rocquigny said: "Witnesses who were driving in the area near the coach saw the vehicle repeatedly swerve towards the verge.

"The tachograph indicates some unexplained variations in speed in the nine minutes before the accident.

"While being questioned the driver, having denied falling asleep, has acknowledged that it was possible that he did so."

Mr Thompson, who tested negative for alcohol or drugs, has been released to return to the UK on the condition he will attend a French court at a later date.

French police said there was also no evidence of him having worked excess hours or speeding at the time of the incident.

As part of his bail conditions, Mr Thompson must inform the authorities in France of any travel outside Britain and is banned from contact with victims and families of those involved in the crash.

The school party had been on a skiing trip to Val d'Aosta and was returning to England when the crash happened.

There had been 20 adults – including two drivers and six ski instructors – and 29 schoolchildren on board, Mansfield-based travel company Interski added.

Most of the children have now arrived back in Worcestershire.

Tributes have been paid to Mr Rippington – whose wife Sharon and daughter Amy were also injured in the crash – at the Church of England middle school, which opened as usual following the half-term break.

Speaking outside the school, Bryan Maybee, chair of governors, offered his condolences to those "affected by this tragic accident".

He said: "[Peter Rippington was] a dedicated and inspirational teacher. We continue to wish for the swift recovery and safe return of those currently being treated for injuries abroad. "

West Mercia Police said family liaison officers had been put in place at the school.

Much of southern and eastern England is officially in a state of drought, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced.

Mary Creagh, Labour's shadow environment secretary, described the drought summit as being "more talk and no action".

"The Tory-led government is out of touch with the pressures facing families – the fact that it has postponed its long-awaited Water Bill means that there will be no action to tackle unsustainable water usage or to help households facing rising water bills for at least another two years," she said.

Water companies, farmers and wildlife groups were invited to discuss the situation at the summit.

Thames Water's sustainability director Richard Aylard said: "There is a high chance we will need restrictions at some stage this summer unless either we get a lot of rain or fantastic co-operation from customers using less water."

He urged people to turn off taps while cleaning their teeth, take shorter showers, fix leaks and only wash laundry with a full load.

The South East joins parts of eastern England which have been in a drought situation since last summer.

That contrasts markedly with Scotland, where reservoirs are between 93% and 97% full.

Ms Spelman said she wanted water companies to look at the possibility of connecting pipe networks so they could transfer water from wetter areas.

Severn Trent's water director, Andy Smith, said each water company had tended to focus on its own area.

"We should be looking at interconnecting the networks between the various water companies.

"There will be opportunities with relatively small levels of investment to make inter-connections between different organisations to try and get the water from the north and the west where it's relatively wet down to the south and the east."

The lack of rain, over the course of two dry winters, appeared to be continuing last month.

South-east England received just two-thirds of the long-term average rainfall for January.

Rainfall has been below average for 18 of the last 23 months in the Thames Valley region and London.

Flows in the River Lee, which passes through Hertfordshire and parts of north-east London, are at less than a quarter of the long-term average for the waterway.

And the Kennet, in Wiltshire, has seen flows of just 31% of its average levels.

The river has dried up completely to the west of Marlborough.

Meanwhile, the Darent, in Kent, is at extremely low levels, as is the Wye in Surrey.

London: Britain’s top shares rose yesterday, boosted by miners after policy easing by China, and supported by optimism over the prospects for Greece, as investors awaited confirmation of an improving outlook for the global economy.

Miners advanced after top metals consumer China cut the amount of cash banks must hold in their reserves, bolstering lending capacity as the world’s second-biggest economy faces a fifth successive quarter of slowing growth.

Much of the newly available credit was seen financing infrastructure and capital investment, so fuelling demand for basic resources.

Britain’s benchmark FTSE-100 share index was up 46.76 points, or 0.8 per cent, at 5,951.83 by 0955 GMT. The index is at seven-month highs, albeit in light trade, with US markets closed for a holiday.

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