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TOKYO (Reuters) - Các buổi lễ ly dị đang trên đà gia tăng tại Nhật sau khi xảy ra thiên tai động đất và sóng thần khủng khiếp mới đây và tiếp theo đó là cuộc khủng hoảng nguyên tử, khiến nhiều cặp vợ chồng không hạnh phúc khi chung sống có lý do để nhìn lại đời mình. Một buổi lễ hủy hôn theo tục lệ Nhật Bản, đánh dấu sự chuyển tiếp trở lại đời sống độc thân tốn vào khoảng 55,000 yen (khoảng $690), kể cả bữa ăn và chấm dứt bằng cách dùng búa đập nát cặp nhẫn cưới. Tomoharu Saito, người tham dự một buổi lễ tương tự ở Tokyo cùng với bà vợ Miki ít ngày trước khi họ ra tòa làm giấy tờ ly dị, nói rằng việc đập nát cặp nhẫn làm ông ta cảm thấy thoải mái vô cùng. “Tôi không nghĩ rằng chiếc nhẫn có thể bị đập dẹp dễ dàng như vậy, nhưng đó là điều xảy ra,” ông nói. “Tôi cũng thấy bàng hoàng, nhưng cùng lúc đó tôi cũng cảm thấy điều này khiến tôi dễ dàng có sự chia tay hơn.” Ngay cả việc chọn y phục cho buổi lễ cũng được lưu ý đến. Họ mặc các bộ quần áo có loại màu nói lên mối quan hệ nhẹ nhàng, bè bạn. Nhà vẽ kiểu y phục, Akiue Go, cho hay ông đặc biệt nhắm tới phần lưng của chiếc áo vì một lý do đặc biệt. “Tôi vẽ kiểu áo để phía lưng người phụ nữ trông đẹp nhất khi quay người lại và bước đi ra,” ông nói. Hiroki Terai, 31 tuổi, một cựu nhân viên bán hàng, nhìn thấy nhu cầu này trên thị trường và khởi sự lễ hủy hôn hai năm trước đây. Từ đó ông đã tổ chức khoảng hơn 80 buổi lễ. Số buổi lễ tăng gấp ba kể từ sau cuộc động đất 9.0 Richter hôm 11 tháng 3. “Thiên tai này khiến nhiều cặp nhìn lại ưu tiên đời sống mình. Một số nghĩ rằng làm việc quan trọng hơn là đời sống gia đình và điều này khiến họ có thêm tự tin cho việc quyết định ly dị,” theo ông Terai. “Ða số những người muốn có cuộc ly dị êm thấm là những người đặt các buổi lễ này.” Bà Miki Saito cho hay trận động đất khiến bà nhận ra rằng muốn ở gần cha mẹ hơn, trong vùng đông bắc nước Nhật, nơi bị ảnh hưởng trầm trọng nhất. “Sau trận động đất, mong ước trở về nhà và sống với cha mẹ tôi trở nên mạnh mẽ hơn,” bà nói. (V.Giang) |
Showing posts with label Reuters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reuters. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Ly dị tăng cao sau thiên tai ở Nhật
Monday, June 6, 2011
06/06 China paper warns Google may pay price for hacking claims
BEIJING |
(Reuters) - Google has become a "political tool" vilifying the Chinese government, an official Beijing newspaper said on Monday, warning that the U.S. Internet giant's statements about hacking attacks traced to China could hurt its business.
The tough warning appeared in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the leading newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, indicating that political tensions between the United States and China over Internet security could linger.
Last week, Google said it had broken up an effort to steal the passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including U.S. government officials, Chinese human rights advocates and journalists. It said the attacks appeared to come from China.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected those accusations, and the party newspaper warned Google against playing a risky political game.
By saying that Chinese human rights activists were among the targets of the hacking, Google was "deliberately pandering to negative Western perceptions of China, and strongly hinting that the hacking attacks were the work of the Chinese government," the People's Daily overseas edition, a small offshoot of the main domestic paper, said in a front-page commentary.
"Google's accusations aimed at China are spurious, have ulterior motives, and bear malign intentions," said the commentary, written by an editor at the paper.
"Google should not become overly embroiled in international political struggle, playing the role of a tool for political contention," the paper added.
"For when the international winds shift direction, it may become sacrificed to politics and will be spurned by the marketplace," it said, without specifying how Google's business could be hurt.
The latest friction with Google could bring Internet policy back to the foreground of U.S.-China relations, reprising tensions last year when the Obama administration took up Google's complaints about hacking and censorship from China.
Google partly pulled out of China after that dispute. Since then, it has lost more share to rival Baidu Inc in China's Internet market, the world's largest by user numbers with more than 450 million users.
Google last week that the hacking attacks appeared to come from Jinan, the capital of China's eastern Shandong province and home to an intelligence unit of the People's Liberation Army.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates over the weekend warned that Washington was prepared to use force against cyber-attacks it considered acts of war.
In February, overseas Chinese websites, inspired by anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world, called for protests across China, raising Beijing's alarm about dissent and prompting tightened censorship of the Internet.
China already blocks major foreign social websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
(Editing by Miral Fahmy.)
03/06 30 years on, AIDS fight may tilt more to treatment
CHICAGO/GENEVA |
(Reuters) - After 30 years of AIDS prevention efforts, global leaders may now need to shift their focus to spending more on drugs used to treat the disease as new data show this is also the best way to prevent the virus from spreading.
The U.N. General Assembly will take up the issue next week as it assesses progress in fighting the disease -- first reported on June 5, 1981 -- that has infected more than 60 million people and claimed nearly 30 million lives.
Guiding the meeting is groundbreaking new data that shows early treatment of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, can cut its transmission to a sexual partner by 96 percent.
"There had been for a long time this artificial dichotomy or artificial tension between treatment versus prevention. Now it is very clear that treatment is prevention and treatment is an important part of a multifaceted combination strategy," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told Reuters.
Fauci, who has made AIDS research his life's work, has a big role to play in the discussion of the NIH-funded study made public on May 12.
"A month ago, we didn't have that data. People were still arguing. 'Well, we are not so sure if you treat people you are really going to prevent infection,'" Fauci said. "The policy makers need to sit down and say, 'Now that we know this, is this going to be enough incentive to change around our policy?'"
That could mean redirecting, or adding to, global spending on fighting AIDS, particularly how much is spent on education or other research versus antiretroviral drugs that allow patients to live with the suppressed disease for many years.
In 2010, nearly $16 billion was spent on HIV response in low and middle-income countries, according to the U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS.
UNAIDS says at least $22 billion will be needed to combat the disease by 2015, helping avert 12 million new infections and 7.4 million more deaths in the next decade.
Globally, the number of people living with HIV rose to 34 million by the end of 2010, from 33.3 million a year earlier. But in poorer countries, a majority of eligible patients were not receiving antiretroviral treatment, according to UNAIDS.
Fauci says he has already discussed this with policymakers and may make public his views on needed policy changes at the International AIDS Society meeting in Rome.
"I don't think it's going to be one-size-fits all," Fauci said of the policy approach. "There is going to be certainly a difference between how things are looked at in the developing world and the developed world. And within the developed world, I think it will be a country-by-country issue."
UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe noted that AIDS remained "a metaphor for inequality" as the vast majority of patients live in Africa, where every year nearly 400,000 babies are born with HIV.
"If you're privileged to be born in the North, you will not die from HIV. It you're privileged to be born in the North, you will not have a baby born with HIV," Sidibe said.
"Countries need to start looking at innovative financing. We need to have drugs which are not just for the rich market."
(Writing by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Jackie Frank)
06/06 Apple's Jobs to take the stage as iCloud hype grows
SAN FRANCISCO |
(Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs returns on Monday to the stage at San Francisco's Moscone center to take the wraps off what investors hope will be the next source of growth for the world's most valuable technology company.
Jobs, who has been on medical leave for months and last took the stage in March to present the iPad 2, will unveil the iCloud, a Web-based service that lets consumers stream music they bought to any Apple device, pitting it against rivals Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc.
That expansion into cloud computing is seen as crucial if the company is to stay competitive with increasingly popular open-sourced software, such as Google's Android operating system, according to analysts and investors.
The iCloud has the potential to make Apple's iTunes even more powerful, making it tougher for rivals to keep up, Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said.
"It looks like Apple will likely offer some base service for free," Wu said. "Competitors, including RIM, Google, Amazon and Microsoft already have a hard time competing with iTunes as it is, but we believe will likely find it even tougher with iCloud enhancements."
The Moscone center in San Francisco -- ground zero in the launch of several iconic Apple gadgets such as the iPad -- was a hive of activity this week as workers put the finishing touches on banners featuring a giant Apple logo.
Apple has been busy wrapping up negotiations with major record labels to secure licenses for its iCloud service, which is also expected to include a revamped version of its little-known MobileMe storage service.
The licenses will help Apple introduce scan-and-match technology that scans a user's hard drive and provides access to music found there from the company's own servers.
Currently, Google and Amazon require users to upload their library of songs.
Some analysts say the iCloud has the potential to be a new model for media consumption, which could also spark more demand for Apple devices.
It could also enable the consumer giant to design new devices around the service, said Trip Chowdhry, managing director of Global Equities Research.
"iCloud by itself will not be a billion dollar revenue opportunity," Chowdhry said. "It is an enabling technology ... once you have things in the cloud, you can create new devices that (have not) been created right now."
The company, legendary for keeping its agenda under wraps, has been unusually open about what it plans to show at its annual developers' conference, a five-day extravaganza for developers that begins on Monday.
Apart from iCloud, Jobs will introduce software upgrades at the conference, including Lion, its Mac OS X computer operating system and the next version of its mobile operating system.
Still, fans, developers and Wall Street cannot help but feel the consummate showman may have a surprise or two up his sleeve because he typically takes the stage only for major events.
There "certainly could be" a surprise, said Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart, who often attends Apple events. "Apple is known for just one more thing."
Apple has used the WWDC venue in the past to unveil a new iPhone, but some sources told Reuters they did not expect the new model to appear until September.
But any appearance by Jobs, who survived a rare form of pancreatic cancer, is usually closely scrutinized by Wall Street, given that the fortunes of the $320 billion company are so closely linked with the co-founder.
"One of the things that's going to be interesting to see is how much actual introduction Steve does and how much he is playing emcee," Greengart said. "He may just come out on stage three times -- once to introduce the things, once to punctuate and once to close. Or he may be on stage for two-and-a-half hours," he added.
(Editing by Andre Grenon)
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