Carrying knife in Britain rarely invites jail
London: Less than one in five thugs, who are caught carrying knives, faces jail term in Britain, official figures have revealed.
With just 19.7 percent being locked up, the figures make a mockery of the Tories? pre-election pledge that anyone carrying a knife should be jailed, the Daily Express reported, adding that this is the first time that the proportion has dropped below 20 percent since 2008.
The number of those jailed has plummeted from almost 1,600 three years ago to 1,024 of the 5,190 offenders sentenced between April and June this year.
This is despite guidelines that the starting point for the lowest level of knife possession should be 12 weeks in prison. Most of those jailed were given three months or less.
Home Secretary Theresa May earlier this year had warned thugs caught in public with knives: Expect to go jail.
Meanwhile, Nick de Bois, a Tory MP for Enfield North, one of the areas hit badly by last month’s riots, is tabling an amendment to Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s sentencing bill.
It calls for a mandatory prison term for knife crime to apply to under-18s as well as adults.
He said: “If you use a knife to threaten or endanger a life, you will go to prison regardless of age.” (IANS)
Cow herd tramples elderly woman to death
London: A herd of cows trampled to death an elderly woman who was passing through a field with her dog, just yards from her home.
Police believe the lady’s dog’s barking may have spooked the cows which were guarding young calves.
Marilyn Duffy, 61, a retired school secretary, was cornered by a herd of 20 cattle – each weighing half a ton – during her regular morning walk in Radyr suburb, near Cardiff county in Wales. She was knocked down and trampled underfoot, the Daily Mail reported Friday.
A neighbour said: “Marilyn was walking her dog and unfortunately the cows took exception to it. They are not domesticated animals, they are wild beasts and it was just an unfortunate thing.” (IANS)
Tibetan tea museum to open in Lhasa
Lhasa: A Tibetan tea museum will open by 2013 in Lhasa to promote the rich Tibetan tea culture that dates back 1,300 years.
The China Tibetan tea union company ltd. has invested 100 million yuan ($15.67 million) to build the museum in a Tibetan cultural park, according to Wang Huan, company chairman.
It will be the first museum in China that focuses on Tibetan tea culture, which can be traced back to the ancient tea and horse trade route during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD).
As tea was a major commodity, the route played an important role in promoting social and economic development in southwest China and facilitating cultural exchanges among neighbouring countries.
Drinking the brick tea after it’s been fermented with butter is the tradition of Tibetans and Chinese minorities in southwestern China. Tea compressed into the shape of brick is called brick tea. (IANS)
Qantas apologizes for rugby fan photo
SYDNEY: Australian national airline Qantas apologized for posting a picture of two rugby fans wearing Afro wigs and with their faces and arms painted black at an international rugby game after it sparked online outrage. The photo, briefly run on the Qantas Twitter site, was the result of a competition asking Australian fans to tell how they would show their support for the team and depicted two fans impersonating Fiji-born Australian team player Radike Samo at a Saturday night international game. (IANS)
Cervantes paved the way for all novelists: Mexican writer
Barcelona: Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes hailed the legacy of Miguel de Cervantes, saying his masterpiece “Don Quixote” paved the way for all modern-day novelists.
In an interview here with EFE, Fuentes said he reads Cervantes’ most famous work every year “as a matter of personal health” and always has the sense that he is “reading it for the first time”.
“Cervantes lets you know what you can’t do as a writer because he already did it better, but he also gives you clues about what you can do because he paved the way,” the 82-year-old author said.
Fuentes recently published “La gran novela latinoamericana” (The Great Latin American Novel) after his US publishers asked him for an essay on his readings of Latin American literature.
But he said the work, which has Spanish- and English-language editions and was recently published in Spain, was not intended to be an academic text.
In the book, Fuentes traces the evolution of the novel in Latin America, from the European discovery of the Americas to the present day.
The Mexican gives special importance to Jorge Luis Borges, who along with figures such as Alejo Carpentier “create an opening for the ‘boom’ that would follow” in the 1960s and 1970s.
That boom would bring Latin American literature to a worldwide audience, a trend evidenced by the tremendous growth in the number of Mexican authors published in other languages.
Whereas a few decades ago there were just three Mexican authors (Juan Rulfo, Octavio Paz and Fuentes) published in French, in the 2008 edition of the Paris book fair, dedicated to Mexico, “some 40 (authors) were presented, 20 of whom already had works published” in that language.
The boom’s great contribution, according to Fuentes, was “a handful of good books that have stood the test of time and freed the novel from the naturalist and realist legacy of the 19th century”.
The only Latin American novel of that time period that stacks up with the region’s best work is Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’ “Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas” (Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas) because it “acknowledged the link it had with Cervantes”.
Fuentes’ essay ends with Juan Villoro, the youngest author of the group and member of Mexico’s so-called Crack generation, along with Ignacio Padilla and Jorge Volpi, who “already have consolidated a body of work and promising career”.
The Mexican author’s “personal vision” of the evolution of the Latin American novel is at times controversial, especially considering some of the acclaimed writers who were excluded.
Perhaps the most glaring absence is late Chilean author Roberto Bola?o: “It’s not because I haven’t read him. I prefer to wait for the noise to die down so I can read him in peace,” he said, referring to the author’s skyrocketing rise in stature since his death in 2003 at age 50.
Regarding the impact the new technologies will have on the future of the novel, Fuentes said he is optimistic: “throughout its history the novel has survived so many challenges that it’s difficult to imagine its demise, because it has died and come back to life too many times.”(IANS)