The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says it welcomes new measures proposed by European Union ministers to coordinate asylum policies among member states. But the UNHCR says it is concerned that some provisions of the proposal could leave some asylum seekers destitute. 

The refugee agency says the proposed European Union measures, which is due to take effect from 2004, should guarantee a uniform package of benefits for asylum seekers. 

UNHCR Spokesman Ron Redmond calls the proposal one more important step in bringing greater coherence to asylum policy in the European Union, because it lays down minimum standards for the reception of asylum seekers, and offers them some vital protections. 

"In particular, UNHCR is pleased to note the detailed sections of the directive regulating access to health care and education, to the provision of identity documents and vital information on asylum procedures, including the availability of legal assistance." said Mr. Redmond. "In addition, there are important sections of the directive that require EU states to take special measures for vulnerable individuals, including victims of torture or violence, unaccompanied children, pregnant women and the disabled." 

However, Mr. Redmond says the UNHCR is concerned about provisions that would allow too much scope for exceptions. For example, he says, the proposal would allow countries to withhold benefits from asylum seekers considered uncooperative. Spokesman Redmond says basic essentials, including food and shelter, must always be assured. He says reducing asylum seekers to a state of destitution serves no useful purpose, and could have serious and undesirable consequences. 

"We feel the decision by the EU states not to harmonize the very different national policies and practices regarding access to employment, for example, is a drawback," explained Mr. Redmond, "particularly at a time when many states are talking about labor deficits and are also concerned about the costs of supporting asylum seekers through a sometimes lengthy asylum process." 

Mr. Redmond says the new measures outlined by the EU interior ministers should put an end to so-called "asylum shopping." Under this practice, asylum seekers move from country-to-country looking for the best conditions. 

Afghanistan is marking the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet-backed government and the creation of the Afghan Islamic state. Afghan officials celebrated the occasion with a parade, during which they pledged to work for peace and stability in the country. 

The interim government of Afghanistan marked the victory over Communism with a national holiday and a three-hour military parade. Afghan soldiers, many of whom fought for the Communist government in the 1980s, marched past the newly painted grandstand in starched uniforms. Their platoons were interspersed with groups of mujahidin guerrillas who fought against the Communist government. 

Beside the grounds, the gutted and abandoned houses of the Saraji neighborhood served as a reminder of the devastating war from which the country has yet to recover. 

Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim congratulated the Afghan people on the end of the communist regime. "I am really happy that today we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the revolution," he declared, "and I want to promise to the people of Afghanistan that we will keep peace and security." 

The defense minister said the most recent conflict in Afghanistan was not a civil war, but rather a war from outside carried out by non-Afghans, a reference to the al-Qaida group allied to the previous Taleban government. Marshal Fahim said the interim government has restored security and is now working to set up a national army. 

Although the parade was well attended, the anniversary was a bitter occasion for many residents of Kabul, because it also marked the beginning of four years of factional fighting that destroyed a great deal of Kabul, including the neighborhood surrounding the parade grounds. 

The anniversary also followed a visit by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who pledged U.S. financial aid for the new Afghan army. 

There were also reminders that although security has greatly improved in most of Afghanistan, it remains elusive in some areas. Secretary Rumsfeld's plane was diverted to the military air base at Bagram, 40 kilometers north of the capital, because Kabul airport was struck by missiles a few hours before his arrival. No casualties or damage were reported. 

In addition, clashes were reported Saturday by fighters of two rival commanders in Gardez Province, south of Kabul. At least 15 people, most of them civilians, were killed and scores of others were wounded. 

AP
Ju Won-taek, an 80-year-old refugee from North Korea 50 years ago, shows a picture of his wife before leaving South Korea for a reunion in the North

 Red Cross societies from both countries made arrangements for the reunions, after getting approval from the Pyongyang and Seoul governments. The South Korean visitors were chosen from among a group of 120,000 applicants. The reunions were to take place last October, but were delayed when South Korea put its military on alert in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. 

The North agreed to restart stalled exchanges with the South early this month, after Seoul sent a presidential envoy to Pyongyang. 

Three previous family reunions held since the June 2000 summit between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il took place alternately in the two Koreas' capitals.

 But this week's reunions are being held at North Korea's Mount Kumgang resort, located close to the border of the divided peninsula and reachable by a four-hour ferry-boat ride. 

A first group of 99 South Koreans, some in wheelchairs, will spend three-days with 186 North Korean family members they have not seen since the 1950-53 Korean War. The Southerners will return home Tuesday, to be followed by another group of 474 South Koreans who will depart for the resort for similar reunions with 100 North Korean relatives. 

In a poignant reminder that time is running out for the separated families, one of the 100 South Koreans slated to make the trip died just days ago. More than 10,000 of the elderly South Koreans who had registered for reunions have died in the past year. 

Thirty South Korean journalists are traveling with the visitors, but foreign journalists were barred from going to the North for the event.

Pervez Musharraf

 President Musharraf says a vote in his favor in the referendum will allow him to continue his economic, social and political reforms after October's parliamentary elections. Responding to critics of his bid to extend his term as president, he told a recent news conference the move will also ensure political stability in the country.

 "It will be an expression of support to these issues through my continuity," he said. "And as a result of this, I feel that there will be stability, there will be political harmony, and we will not return to the destabilized political environment of the past."

 General Musharraf's bloodless coup in 1999 was widely welcomed, amid rising frustration with corruption and political misrule under former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. 

But since President Musharraf announced his plan earlier this month to hold a referendum on extending his term in office, some Pakistanis seem to be taking a more critical view. Many people are unhappy about the state resources being spent to promote General Musharraf and his campaign. 

State-run television has been running campaign ads, in which national songs are played under clips of President Musharraf speaking on his domestic and foreign policies.

 In one ad, General Musharraf is telling viewers that Pakistan is a nuclear power of 140 million people, and the international community cannot sideline it. The song that follows the message says all Pakistani's are behind General Musharraf.

 Imran Nazir, a commercial banker in Islamabad, says the referendum campaign is costing too much money for a poor country like Pakistan. 

"It is being overdone," he said. "If you switch on television, it seems that the whole country is only indulged in celebrating the referendum. And if you go by the fanfare and the band-wagons moving around in the city, it seems that there is some sort of folk festival going around."

 Nineteen-year-old Mashal Ahmed mistrusts the image the general is projecting. "He is portraying himself to be more of a politician," she said. "You know that everybody in Pakistan has a lot of misconceptions about politicians. They have a bad image, and if we finally got somebody who is good enough for the country, he should not have portrayed such an image."

 In his speeches, General Musharraf has repeatedly accused past elected governments of using state money to promote their political agendas.

 Mushahid Hussain, a former information minister who is now a political commentator, says President Musharraf is now doing that. "It's very ironical that those governments and leaders were criticized in the past for using state-machinery for political purposes, which is precisely what has been done during this present campaign," he said. "So, I feel that this whole exercise has not raised the stature of General Musharraf. In fact, it has pulled that stature down a few notches, even in the eyes of his strong supporters."

 President Musharraf rejects criticism of his referendum campaign, saying the money spent is part of democratic practices. He also says the large crowds at his rallies show his support is growing. He dismisses allegations that these gatherings are staged. 

"I think I am also not that naïve not to understand whether people are coming of their own volition or they are being forces to come," he said. "And if at all somebody is arranging some transport for them, or facilitating their coming, he is not forcing them to come. Nobody can force people to come to such places. You can force hundreds or a few couple of thousand of people, but you cannot force 250-thousand people to come."

 Many Pakistanis say, since no previous military ruler has ever lost such referendums in Pakistan, they believe President Musharraf will win on Tuesday. But some also say his campaign may have damaged his credibility.

Many conventional business managers have said they can't make a profit if they follow environmentally responsible practices. But one international furniture maker has been doing it for years - so long in fact that people around the country are asking company officials for advice.

 About 100 architects, interior designers, city planners, government and private environmental groups gather at the University of Idaho's Urban Research Design Center. They're want to learn about the sustainable business practices of Herman Miller Incorporated, a Michigan-based industrial design company with suppliers and clients in 40 different countries. 

The company builds office furniture, employs 9,500 people and last year did $2 billion in sales. 

"As a company we want to live with integrity and protect the environment because it's actually a business proposition here, if we don't figure out how to do that, we're gonna run out of raw materials," said Paul Murray, Environmental Affairs Manager. 

That's already happened with some hardwood from tropical rain forests the company once used in its office furniture. 

"We discontinued using rose wood because we couldn't get good quality rose wood anymore because too many of the trees had been cut in the forest," Mr. Murray said. 

"We'd be out of business, there's just not enough that has been listed on the list of sustainability," he said. 

Herman Miller is not the only company seeking wood from sustainable forests, where trees are harvested in controlled cuts and replanted to preserve the forest ecosystem. One of the nation's leading home product sellers, Home Depot, also wants to buy at least a portion of its wood products from sustainable forests. The firm's goal is one percent this year and five percent over the next five years. 

Eco-furniture's teak dining room set

"We use the criteria that is set forth by the Forest Stewardship Council," he said. "They are really an organization which monitors and makes sure all of the wood is certified sustainably harvested." 

The Forest Stewardship Council, based in Oxaca, Mexico, requires that forest managers maintain biological diversity within the harvest areas, and that they do regular environmental monitoring, meet applicable laws, respect the rights of indigenous communities, conserve natural resources, and submit have a written forest management plan. The Council's strict forestry standards appeal to 27-year-old Scott Swanson. He and his fiancée are shopping for a table, chairs, a sofa and a love seat, and cost is pretty important to them. 

"Yeah I believe we both would agree that paying a little bit more in order to protect our environment is worth it," he said. 

Furniture made with the environment in mind may cost more, but it's usually more durable, says Tom Hegge, owner of the Office Pavillion, the Boise store that sells Herman Miller office furniture. "For the corporations and institutions that probably drive the volume of the market, they are going to get something that lasts longer, can be repaired to live longer, and I think it's become a part of value, overall cost rather than initial price," he said. 

Until there's enough wood from sustainable forests, companies like Herman Miller, the Michigan-based design firm, will continue buying from well-managed forests - sending out purchasing agents to look at harvesting practices and planting regimens. Herman Miller's Paul Murray says his company protects the environment in other ways, too: hauling more furniture per load, crafting their chairs to last for years, even designing their factory and office buildings to save energy. They feature lots of openable windows to let in natural light and fresh air in the spring and fall, and furnaces that burn the factories' waste wood. 

But such eco-friendly strategies can be hard to implement. Steve Benner of CSHQA Architectural Engineering in Boise says he often has difficulty persuading developers to spend extra money today on future energy savings. "A lot of developers will develop a building and then own it for a couple of years, then lease it out then they'll sell the building," he said. "So they aren't concerned about savings that are going to occur ten years down the road, cause they're not gonna going to own the building anymore." 

Mr. Benner says state building codes that require energy efficiency could help. Education is important too. Ann Hausrath, with Idaho's Sustainability Coalition, helped organize on the Herman Miller event. 

"We are helping to build an ethic of sustainability in Boise, which means, to make all of our decisions as if the future mattered," she said. 

Ms. Hasurath says businesses are in a powerful position to make dramatic changes in the environment - for better or for worse. 

Mark Twain Courtesy: ArtToday

 Stuffed onto shelves and piled high on desks is the world's largest archive of Mark Twain's papers. It includes about fifty notebooks the writer kept from 1855 until his death in 1910, as well as his personal Bible and childhood photos. 

AP
Robert Hirst holds a handwritten letter by author Mark Twain

 "This is from Chapter 3 of Tramp Abroad, it's called Baker's Blue Jay Yarn, and he goes on to tell a story about some actual blue jays, ostensibly actual blue jays in the Sierras. 'You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure, because he got feathers on him and don't belong to no church, perhaps. But otherwise, he is just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why… a jay's gifts and instincts and feelings and interests cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray, and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise. The sacredness of an obligation is a thing which you can't cram into any blue jay's head. Yessir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry, a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay's got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do… maybe better.'"

 Mr. Hirst says the writer was so successful in his lifetime because his criticisms of society were sugarcoated with humor. He calls that 'Mark Twain's greatest achievement.' "He knew how to put the contradictions or the complexities in a humorous way so that the humor has a way of sliding things past you that you would otherwise resist," he says. "If you can laugh at something, you're in a much better position to judge it or re-judge it, judge it afresh, instead of judging it always in the way you've judged it before."

 Mr. Hirst says his main goal as curator is to get Mark Twain's unpublished manuscripts into print, and that's one of the many reasons the non-profit Archive needs money. 

To raise funds, fans of the author formed The Mark Twain Luncheon Club. The writer loved clubs. He created several… including the Modest Club, which had a membership of one. The sixty members of the Mark Twain Luncheon Club each pay an annual fee of fifteen hundred dollars to attend two luncheons a year, where they celebrate Samuel Clemens, the man, and Mark Twain, the novelist, journalist, author, humorist and orator. 

Gwen Mitchell says she joined because she loved reading Mark Twain's books as a child. "His dialogue was very real," she says. "I know there's been criticism about some of the words that they used from back in those days but it was very realistic and you were transported into that time and that era. It was mostly about boys not too many girls in it but I guess that's why I enjoyed it. Full of adventure. Things I couldn't have done myself so I did them through reading the books."
 
 

Actor Hal Holbrook was the keynote speaker at the most recent Mark Twain luncheon (in March). Mr. Holbrook has been earning a living portraying Mark Twain in a one-man show for nearly 50 years and he says the writer has become a part of him. "The more I learned about him, the more I became acquainted with the astonishing wealth of material and the wealth of subject matter that he touched, the more I realized he was probably our greatest social critic in the disguise of a literary man," he says.

 That 'social critic' was born at a time in America when life was uncomplicated and he observed, and commented on, its change and growth into an industrial nation. 

Robert Middlekauff, a University of California History Professor Emeritus, is writing a biography of Mark Twain. He's also one of the founders of the Luncheon Club, and sees the writer as a fascinating character whose story offers readers insight into the 19th century. "I think it's a scandal that the Mark Twain Project isn't better supported," he says. "We have great writers in this country and though we read them, we neglect the important obligation of seeing that their works are published in really reliable texts and that's what this project is doing."

 The Mark Twain Archive is open to visitors, students and scholars by appointment. Its wealth of memorabilia is the reason the collection has been called a hidden national treasure. 

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