America Archive

Los Angeles, Nov 3 (DPA) A Los Angeles court set a Dec 10 date for a hearing in the case against Franco-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski, the New York Times said in its online edition Monday.

Polanski, 76, was arrested in Zurich Sep 26, based on a US warrant issued in 1978 stemming from Polanski’s admission to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in California in 1977.

Polanski fled the US after spending 42 days in prison for psychiatric tests and has never been sentenced.

In the December hearing, Polanski’s lawyers are to appeal a Superior Court decision from May, which rejected Polanski’s request to close the case against him owing to legal flaws in the 1978 proceedings. The court argued that Polanski had to argue his case personally.

The US requested his extradition two weeks ago. Polanski is expected to fight the extradition.

Washington, Nov 3 – Nearly half of American children, including some 90 percent of black children and an equal number of children growing in single-parent households, will eat meals paid for by food stamps at some point, according to a new study.

More than 35.8 million Americans used food stamps, officially known as the US Department of Agriculture’s Nutrition Assistance Programme, in July – nearly 6.8 million more than a year earlier.

Nearly one-quarter of US children will live in homes that receive food stamps for five or more years, says the study published in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Food stamps are important indicators of poverty and risk of food insecurity, ‘two of the most detrimental economic conditions affecting a child’s health’, says Thomas A. Hirschl, Cornell professor of development sociology and co-author of the study.

The study is based on an analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a 32-year study of about 4,800 US households; it builds on the authors’ 2004 research that reported that half of all Americans will use food stamps during adulthood.

Although the sample used is representative of the US populations, it does not reflect the immigrant population, the researchers said.

‘Children in poverty are significantly more likely to experience a range of health problems, including low birth weight, lead poisoning, asthma, mental health disorders, delayed immunisation, dental problems and accidental death,’ write Hirschl and co-author Mark R. Rank of Washington University in St. Louis.

‘Poverty during childhood is also associated with a host of health, economic and social problems later in life.’

It also adds some $22 billion per year in additional health care costs, the researchers said noting the risk of living in homes using food stamps is far from equitably distributed.

For instance, 90 percent of children who live with single parents, compared with 37 percent who live in married and other two-parent households, ‘encounter spells of food stamp use’, the authors find.

Similarly 90 percent of black children, compared with 37 percent of white children, and 62 percent of those whose head of household did not graduate from high school, compared with 31 percent where the head has more than 12 years of school.

Putting those risk factors together, the researchers found that 97 percent of black children living in non-married households where the household head has less than 12 years of education will have received food stamps, compared with 21 percent of white children living in married households whose head of household has 12 or more years of education.

‘The situation is likely bad for children,’ says Hirschl, ‘because families eligible for food stamps who participate tend to be worse off nutritionally than eligible families who don’t participate.’

Only about 60 percent of families eligible for food stamps actually participate, he said, because of the stigma associated with government help.

Mexico City, Nov 3 (EFE) A crime reporter for a Mexican daily was abducted as he was leaving his home, authorities have said.

Vladimir Antuna, who works for El Tiempo de Durango, was grabbed around 10 a.m. Monday by three people who apparently shoved him in a car and drove away.

The incident took place in Durango city, where drug cartels and other criminal organisations are very active.

‘We know what is known everywhere, apparently that’s what happened, the authorities know it and they’re undertaking the investigations,’ El Tiempo editor Saul Garcia told EFE.

Antuna had filed a complaint not long ago about ‘some kind of problem’, Garcia said.

Press accounts indicated that it was because of death threats.

Garcia said that to be a journalist in Mexico has become a high-risk profession.

Several months ago another journalist was kidnapped and slain in an area along the border between Durango and neighbouring Coahuila state that has seen a surge in drug-cartel violence in recent years.

Nine journalists have been slain in Mexico so far this year.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based watchdog group, said that 55 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000.

Havana, Nov 3 (EFE) Cuban purchases from US companies will total some $580 million by the end of 2009, down 37 percent from last year, the head of the state corporation Alimport said.

‘This will be the first year that they (purchases from the US) will decline both in volume and in value, and if current conditions continue, it will be very difficult to keep increasing the volume of business,’ Igor Montero said Monday at the inauguration of the 27th International Trade Fair in Havana.

He attributed the decrease in purchases – principally of food supplies – to the global recession, rising food prices and the economic embargo that the US has imposed on Cuba since 1962.

The severe slump the island is going through has forced authorities to lower their forecast for 2009 economic growth from 6 percent to 1.7 percent and to make drastic cuts in imports, which were outpacing exports by a ratio of 5-1 at the beginning of the year.

Trade fair organisers in Havana estimate that deals will be signed this year for some $150 million compared with $350 million in 2008.

In 2001, Washington began allowing Cuba to make cash purchases of food and medicine from US firms, and since then Cuban purchases from the US have been worth more than $4 billion, according to Alimport figures.

But Montero warned that if conditions for doing business in that country do not change, ‘it will be very difficult to continue with trade at the levels we’ve been used to’.

He added that 35 US companies are attending the fair (compared with 61 in 2008) along with delegations from state governments.

Also present at the fair’s opening was Cuban Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca, who said the communist-ruled island’s foreign trade dropped by 36 percent in the first nine months of 2009 compared to the same period last year.

He acknowledged that the government has difficulties paying its suppliers.

‘The Cuban economy is characterised by obstacles to getting international financing, the reduction of demand and of prices for our main export products, and the increase of priority imports like food, with the obvious decline in purchasing power,’ Malmierca said.

Washington, Nov 3 – The International Monetary Fund has sold 200 tonnes of gold worth $6.7 billion to the Reserve Bank of India to shore up the Fund’s finances to enable it to step up concessional lending to the world’s poorest countries.

This sale to India announced Monday represents almost half of the total sales volume of 403.3 tonnes that was approved by the IMF Executive Board Sep 18.

The Washington-based IMF said the transaction, which is in the process of being settled, involved daily sales that were phased over a two-week period during Oct 19-30.

Each daily sale was conducted at a price set on the basis of market prices prevailing that day, it said, in accordance with the institution’s founding document.

‘I strongly welcome this transaction with the Reserve Bank of India,’ Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn stated.

‘This transaction is an important step toward achieving the objectives of the IMF’s limited gold sales programme, which are to help put the Fund’s finances on a sound long-term footing and enable us to step up much-needed concessional lending to the poorest countries.’

The IMF, which currently holds 3,217 tonnes of gold, is the third-largest official holder of the precious metal after the US and Germany.

The IMF has made gold sales a key element of its new income model aimed at lowering its dependence on lending revenue to cover expenses.

Under the Fund’s Articles of Agreement, all gold sales must be conducted at prices based on market prices, including direct sales to official holders as in the case of this transaction with India, the IMF said.

In accordance with the guiding principle of avoiding disruption of the gold market, the IMF’s Executive Board adopted modalities for the gold sales consistent with guidelines it had earlier established, it said.

In particular, the Fund is standing ready for an initial period to sell gold directly to central banks and other official holders that may be interested in such sales, the Fund said.

Thereafter, on-market sales of any amounts remaining from the 403.3 tonnes would be conducted in a phased manner over time, following the approach adopted successfully by central banks participating in the Central Bank Gold Agreement.

The Fund reiterated it will inform markets before any on-market sales commence, and will report regularly to the public on progress with the gold sales.