Person of the Week
OFFSIDE Dicey finances, hints of bribery, a financial collapseFIFA president Sepp Blatter might have done well at Enron. Though he says all’s well with football’s ruling body, many in the sport see the launch of an internal investigation into FIFA’s finances as tantamount to a yellow card for Blatter
Noted
“It seems quite clear now that our economy maybe never suffered a recession.”
PAUL O’NEILL,
U.S. Treasury Secretary, who believes that the U.S. economy began expanding early enough last year to avert an actual recession
Prime Number
$2,050 is what the families of Muslims killed in recent riots in India will receive from the governmenthalf the amount families of Hindu victims will get
Omen
South Koreans threw away 4 million tons of food last year, more than the total output of staple foods in North Korea, according to a government report
Winners
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
Liz shakes off commitment fears to play Elton John’s wife in new video. Hope she knows who wears the ruby sequined gown in that family
HOSNI MUBARAK
Egypt’s leader says peace is good and is lauded on U.S. visit. When it comes to the Middle East, the bar has gotten very, very low
ANNE HECHE
Lesbian-turned-wife has a baby, names him Homer Heche Laffoon. Somewhere, Ellen has to be asking herself: was Anne faking it all along?
Losers
BILL CLINTON
Ex-Prez would have been convicted, says final report. And all this time, America has been wasting its attention on the war on terrorism
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN
Historian quits Pulitzer jury because of plagiarism problems. It turns out she also borrowed that accent from the Kennedys
TED KOPPEL
Anchor is peeved when his network reveals it wants Letterman. Koppel consoles himself by saying he always wanted to work at PBS anyway
Falun Gong Finds Free Cable
By MATTHEW FORNEY Beijing
Settling in front of the tube one evening last week, residents of the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun thought they were about to watch a special about their rubber-stamp parliament in Beijing. They got some special programming all rightbrought to them by the Falun Gong movement, Public Enemy No. 1 of the Chinese state. Hacker devotees had spliced their way into the cable system in Changchun, birthplace of Falun Gong founding guru Li Hongzhi, and broadcast to as many as 300,000 households. Stunned city officials held an emergency meeting and swore to punish followers “with no leniency”but the damage was done.
Twice during prime time that evening all eight cable channels went dead “and then there was Li Hongzhi speaking,” a viewer told the Reuters news agency. Shots of banners reading FALUN GONG IS GOOD were followed by a documentary called Self Immolation or Deception? that accused the government of staging protest suicides in Tiananmen Square last year and blaming them on Falun Gong.
The attack could rejuvenate a movement that seemed crushed. Police hold thousands of the group’s followers in labor camps. The only protests in Tiananmen Square these days are by foreign devotees: seven Australians were detained there on the same day as the pirate broadcast and later deported.
But Falun Gong is a techno-savvy group. It has a coterie of underground activists that stay in touch through encrypted e-mails and temporary mobile-phone numbers. Hacking into a cable network is as simple as hooking up a portable DVD player to one of the cable’s unprotected transmission points. It takes about 10 min. and “everything they need is available at Radio Shack,” says a foreign cable executive in China. There’s not much the government can do except encrypt transmissions or lay state-of-the-art digital cable linesboth far too expensive solutions for rusting industrial cities like Changchun. Watch for prime time to become a prime target.
Goodbye Kitty
By VALENTINE DING
A Bad, Bad Bunny he’s animated, angry and determinedly flatulentand if you’ve got something against that, you’re obviously not a teenage Chinese girl. Mashimaro is the hippest cartoon mascot in the world’s largest market. (Do you hear that, Hello Kitty?) Created in 1999 by Korean cartoonist Kim Jae-In, Mashimaro’s crudely funny animated adventures have been adopted by countless Chinese teens and loaded onto their websites. Like his cutesy Japanese predecessor’s, Mashimaro merchandise is hot. For the new “pink-collar class”trendy Chinese girls with a cell phone in one hand and a decaf skim latte in the otherMashimaro key chains and earmuffs are must-haves. What’s the appeal? “Good girls want to be ‘bad,'” explains Shu Qiao, a grad student at Shanghai’s Fudan University. “They want to be rebellious and make crude jokes.”
Milestones
By NEIL GOUGH
CONVICTED. NECMETTIN ERBAKAN, 75, former Prime Minister of Turkey and longtime leader of the country’s Islamic movement, to 28 months in prison for fraud; in Ankara. Erbakan will likely appeal, and has remained influential despite being barred from politics for five years and having his own Welfare Party banned in 1998 by Turkey’s secular-military establishment.
DIED. CALVIN CARRIERE, 80, renowned fiddler and zydeco music pioneer, regarded by many as one of the last links to French-Creole musical traditions; in Opelousas, Louisiana. Carriere’s most recent recording was Les miseres dans le coeur (The Misery Direct from the Heart) in 2000. He was scheduled to perform in the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival this April.
DIED. WALTER GOODMAN, 74, television critic, author and New York Times reporter; in Valhalla, New York. His 1968 book The Committee was widely praised and remains a prominent history of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which under Senator Joseph McCarthy led the 1950s witch-hunt for communists in the U.S.
DIED. DON HAIG, 68, film producer and editor regarded as the godfather of Canadian movies for his willingness to assist and nurture aspiring talent; in Toronto. Haig rose from humble beginningscutting commercials into the The Ed Sullivan Show for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in the ’50sto become a prominent figure in Canadian cinema. He is best known for his work on the Oscar-winning documentary Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got.
DIED. RYO HAMMURA, 68, prolific author whose diverse works ranged from science fiction to horror, history and romance; in Tokyo. Hammura won Japan’s coveted Naoki Prize for his 1975 novel Amayadori.
DIED. PETER SUTCH, 56, former chairman of Hong Kong’s Swire Group, one of the territory’s older trading houses, of cancer; in Rome. Sutch eschewed the stuffy, colonial taipan mold in favor of a more modern and pragmatic management style.
CHARGED. HUTOMO MANDALA PUTRA, 30, better known as Tommy Suharto, youngest son of the former Indonesian dictator, with the murder of a Supreme Court judge who in September 2000 sentenced him for graft; in Jakarta. Tommy has been in detention since November and is scheduled to face trial this month.
RELEASED. ARUNDHATI ROY, acclaimed Indian novelist jailed for a day for contempt of court, after she paid a $42 fine to avoid serving another three months; in New Delhi. Roy, who in 1997 won Britain’s Booker Prize for her first novel, The God of Small Things, was convicted for criticizing a Supreme Court decision to approve a controversial hydroelectric project.
FILED FOR DIVORCE. EDWARD JAMES OLMOS, 55, from LORRAINE BRACCO, 46, co-star of TV’s The Sopranos and his wife of seven years, four of which they have spent separated; in Los Angeles.
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