(Reuters) - China used the 70th anniversary of World War Two's D-Day landings on Friday to praise Germany for its contrition over its wartime past and slam Japan for what Beijing views as Tokyo's continued denial of its brutal history.
China has increasingly contrasted Germany and its public remorse for the Nazi regime to Japan, where repeated official apologies for wartime suffering are sometimes undercut by contradictory comments by conservative politicians.
Ties between the two Asian rivals worsened on Dec. 26 when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which China sees as a symbol of Tokyo's past militarism because it honors war criminals along with millions of war dead.
"Germany's sincere remorse has won the confidence of the world," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily news briefing, when asked about the D-Day anniversary.
"But in Asia on the Asian battlefield, the leaders of Japan, which caused harm and which lost the war, are to this day still trying to reverse the course of history and deny their history of invasion," Hong added.
"What Japanese leaders are doing has been widely condemned in the international community. We again urge Japan's leaders to face up to and deeply reflect on the history of invasion and take real steps to correct their mistakes to win the trust of its neighbors in Asia and in the international community."
Japan's government and Abe himself have repeatedly said that Japan has faced up to its past sincerely.
- (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Japan urged to correct mistakes as D-Day remembered
BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday urged Japan to reflect on its aggression past and correct mistakes with practical actions, as international D-Day commemorations were held.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily press briefing, "We again urge Japanese leaders to face up to and remember its aggression past, correct mistakes with tangible actions and win the trust of Asian neighbors and the international community."
Among international commemorations of the 70th anniversary of D-Day being held, one was in Normandy, France.
Hong said as far as the Second World War is concerned, Europe has turned over a new page. Quoting an old Chinese saying, he said, "Past experience, if not forgotten, is a guide for the future."
Hong said, "Germany has won world respect by sincerely apologizing for its wrong-doing.
"Yet leaders of Japan, a defeated country in World War II, are still attempting to deny its past and challenge the post-war international order, thus their acts are widely condemned by the international community."
HMS Bulwark will be part of a flotilla heading to France from Portsmouth
Friday marks 70 years since the allied troops in the Second World War
landed in Normandy. Ceremonies large and small have been taking place
on both sides of the English Channel.
WWII
veterons attend a Drumhead Service on Southsea Common in commemoration
of the D-Day landings on June 5, 2014 in Portsmouth, England.
In the southern English naval base of Portsmouth, which was the
departure point for troops heading to Sword Beach, one of the main
landing points, British Royal Marines acted out military exercises for
thousands of veterans who gathered on Thursday to make the crossing for
the commemorations.
While over in northern France, 300 soldiers from the US, UK, Canada
and France parachuted in tandem over the village of Ranville, and World
War II planes flew over Utah Beach. Thousands of Allied troops flew or
parachuted onto the German-occupied French soil during the early hours
of June 6th, in 1944, catching the German army by surprise. But the
price was high, nearly 4,500 were dead by the end of the day.
With many D-Day veterans now in their 90s, this year could be the
last time that many of those who took part in the battle, will be able
to make the long journey back to Normandy and tell their stories. The
main D-Day ceremony will be held in Ouistreham, a small port that was
the site of a strategic battle on D-Day. Some 18 heads of state are
expected to attend the commemorations.
KUALA LUMPUR: Canadian entrepreneur Adam Hirsch,
who focuses on tech start-ups, finds Malaysia a conducive place for
start-ups, not just because of low operational cost or the English
language proficiency of the people, but also the ability to get fast
results here.
With a recommendation from a friend in 2012 to start his business here, Hirsch told StarBiz: “We can quickly get feedbacks and easily validate the success or failure of a new idea.”
Citing an example of one of his recent ventures to provide a sales
training programme for retail and food and beverages (F&B)
personnels, he said after a quick check with potential clients on the
ground, his team found out in less than a week that many wanted the
course but were not willing to pay for it.
“This idea subsequently metamorphosised to become a digital
marketing agency where we help our clients do search engine optimisation
(SEO),” he said.
The venture, which is only three months old, has 15 clients comprising small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Hirsch, who founded the Kuala Lumpur-based Mother Goose Venture Developer
(MGVD) in early 2013, said he was solely interested in building
businesses through his company which he described as a “venture builder
platform” that brought people, ideas and resources together to build
successful businesses.
The company has six active ventures at the moment, including
Hijab2Go and Easy Read. Hijab2go is an e-commerce website specialising
in women’s fashion brands, specifically traditional Muslim fashion,
while Easy Read is a language education application that helps young
adults and professionals learn new languages while reading content that
is relevant to them.
“With so much of shared resources, it takes less than RM20,000 to start a new company within MGVD,” he said.
One of MGVD’s ventures, Ticket Hero, has also received a grant from Cradle Fund, an agency under the Ministry of Finance, which promotes early stage funding.
Ticket Hero is an event listing web and mobile application that
helps Malaysians discover their city by listing all types of events
including arts, cultural, nightlife and sports.
Hirsch, who started two Internet companies in his university days,
said there were four categories of assistance available in the start-up
community, namely the incubator, accelerator, venture capitalist (VC)
and business builder.
“To assist a start-up is not as simple as giving them the funds and a
strategy to work on. Hence, you encounter many VCs failing with that
strategy. Those VCs that succeed will likely be attributed to the
entrepreneurs in the start-up,” he said.
As a business builder, Hirsch, who is keen on the details of
building a business, said MGVD used funds to build a business but did
not disburse funds like a VC did.
“The No. 1 disease in the start-up community is talking about
building companies and yet doing nothing about it. It is more hands-on
where we are also involved in marketing and business development, beyond
just being a service provider,” he said.
Planning to raise RM1.5mil within the start-up community this year,
he said the group would start another 10 ventures within the next two
years.
Adding that the group was looking for entrepreneur-in-residence, he
said they would do all that was needed to get the business running to
become profitable entities.
“We hope to attract more Malaysian entrepreneurs who are ready to
lead a project and team. Our goal is to build as many successful
businesses as possible and to help entrepreneurs to push themselves
towards excellence,” he concluded.
Contributed by Lim Wing Hooi The Star/Asia News Network
Being the only Malay among a class of Chinese students holds special memories of unity.
IN these months of Merdeka and the formation of Malaysia, I wish to pay tribute to my old school, SMJK Hua Lian in Perak.
Why
was my school experience so special? I was the only Malay boy in a sea
of Chinese students, yet I felt no racial or religious pressures. I
sailed through four years of education making friends, having fun and
learning lots of things from my mostly non-Malay teachers.
While I
take a few moments to recollect some incidents, why don’t we also take
this time to ask just what is wrong with our country – to the point that
racial and religious mistrust still prevails after half a century.
My
childhood days from Standard One to Six were spent at the police
barracks in Butterworth, Penang, where I would walk about half a
kilometre every day to St Mark’s Primary School. My childhood friends at
the barracks were mostly Malays, but there were several Chinese boys
and the two sons of a burly Sikh sergeant major.
My father was
only a police constable with the rank of “private” despite his 30 years
of service. Mother tells of his reluctance to move too far away from his
family in Pantai Besar and Batu Kurau (both in Perak), which resulted
in his stagnant position. Though my father was educated only up to
Standard Three, he could scold me effortlessly in Queen’s English!
But
the most important thing that I remember is that he NEVER uttered a
single harsh word against any Chinese or Indian, unlike the fathers of
my friends. He had many Chinese friends whom he visited occasionally,
with me tagging along on his Vespa.
At St Mark’s, I had many
friends who were Indians, Sikhs and Chinese. I remember one particular
boy, the “soft” kind who was always jeered at for being feminine. We
both got on well because of our one common interest – Enid Blyton story
books! We would exchange comics and books all the time.
At the police barracks, I flew kites and played gasing, football and hide-and-seek among the wreakage of armoured police vehicles.
One
day, I was greatly saddened to learn that my father was retiring from
the police force and that we had to move to Taiping. The family moved in
June of 1976 to the police barracks in Taiping. At 14, it was difficult
to make friends at the barracks, so I was hoping it would be better in
the new school. Little did I realise that my life was about to take a
sharp turn.
There was no school that offered Industrial Arts in
the English medium of instruction. St George’s Institution was
agriculture based and King Edwards was commerce based. We finally found a
school … next to the oldest prison in Malaysia. SMJK Hua Lian at Jalan
Lumba Kuda had two sessions and 99.7% of its 2,000 students were
Chinese!
I had been in Form 2A in St Mark’s, so when I
transferred to Hua Lian, the headmaster asked which class I wanted to be
in. I asked if there were any other Malay boys and if so, in which
class? He said yes, but the two other boys were in Form 2D1 – the last
class with the naughtiest students! I said okay and stepped into the
most interesting period of my school life.
Try to imagine me at
14, a scrawny, bespectacled four-foot-something guy amidst burly Chinese
five-footers who were all a year older than me as they had been to
Remove class. I was an “A” student among those who got Cs and Ds. Every
time the teacher stepped out to go to the toilet during the monthly
exams, the whole class would crowd around me for answers to all the
subjects, except my weakest subject, Mathematics.
I excelled in
English and Bahasa Malaysia (BM) and it was wonderful to see pandemonium
breaking out among my classmates whenever it was announced at assembly
that I had obtained the highest marks for English in the whole form,
beating those nerds from 2A1 (all boys) and 2A2 (all girls). My old form
teacher was all smiles when he told the class that he was pleased to
have at least one student who passed all his subjects.
Two
recollections are worth highlighting here. Once, a Malay teacher who
taught BM was so incensed with some students for being rude to him that
he threw everyone out of the classroom and we had to stand in the hot
sun for the whole period. That included me. It wasn’t fair because I was
always a “teacher’s pet”. So there we were, all 42 of us, being stared
at by the girls in 2B2, 2C2 and 2A2.
The other thing that has
stayed with me is how my Chinese friends loved to gamble. They would bet
almost every single day on Malaysian football, sports or even whether
it would rain that day. Once I saw a boy win RM1,000 in a football pool!
I rarely saw a RM50 and had never even seen a RM100 note. My mother
gave me RM10 a month as allowance but she cooked and packed food for me
every day.
I was moved up to 3B1 after that year and left my
colourful friends at 3D1. After the LCE exams (the equivalent of SRP
today), I was placed in the top science class, which was co-ed. One
thing about Hua Lian – I had never had any puppy love problems because
of the racial difference. I was not interested in the girls and I was
not much to look at anyway.
For me, the most memorable thing
about being in 4Sc1 was that we put up a play during Teacher’s Day and
was asked to restage it in front of the whole school.
Another fun
thing was that I joined the Police Cadet Force with my tall Chinese
friends, about 40 of us. We learnt to march and practise arms drill and
withstand the verbal abuses of our drill masters. With our smart
uniforms, and knowledge of security details during special occasions in
school, we impressed the girls – one of the perks of being in that hot
and sweaty, brown get-up.
In 5Sc1, we had a lot of class parties.
I had never been to a party before, especially one with a mix of boys
and girls. My Chinese friends were very tolerant of my faith and
endeavoured to make sure all the food was “halal”, or so they told me. I
had absolute faith in their sincerity. We played games at these parties
and joked around. It was great fun and I had never felt accepted as
much before.
The other great thing was the formation of the first
ever multi-racial sepak takraw team. I loved the game and played the
“killer” position. There were only three other Malay boys in school and
we had to find five Chinese boys because of the compulsory three-team
rule. We sought good football players and basketball players as takraw
requires agile footwork, springing and ball-handling.
We managed
to form the team and went on the inter-school competition league. We
went up against three schools and, of course, lost all the games. But
everywhere we went, we were the talk of the day as no one had ever seen a
Chinese-Malay takraw team.
I was one of the top 10 students in
the MCE examination (the equivalent of SPM), securing 6As. I was the
only Malay candidate in the Science stream and all my Chinese and Indian
teachers were most proud of me. I was the only one who had scored a
distinction (A2) in the Overseas English Exam, finally beating that
lanky nerd of nerds, the head prefect.
After a short stint in
Lower Six, I left to study in the United States for six years on a
government scholarship. By then, most of my friends had gone to Canada,
Britain or Australia, sponsored by their parents. Some who did not make
it to Lower Six or the local universities had to look for work.
I
would like to take this opportunity to thank all my Hua Lian teachers
from 1976-80 for their dedication and commitment. I used to joke that I
was the best and worst Malay MCE student because I was the only one.
My
Chinese friends and I studied, played (I never gambled although almost
all my friends did), partied, took part in sports, marched in the cadet
corps, went girl-watching at the Taiping Lake Gardens, had ice kacang at
the Larut Matang Supermarket and talked about our future.
I
sincerely believe that if narrow-minded politicians were to leave our
multi-racial communities alone, we would probably live in better harmony
than we do now. I not only survived, but thrived, at SMJK Hua Lian with
my Chinese friends and teachers.
"Free trade" is a sacred mantra in Washington. If anything is labeled as being "free trade", then everyone in the Washington establishment is required to bow down and support it. Otherwise, they are excommunicated from the list of respectable people and exiled to the land of protectionist Neanderthals.
This is essential background to understanding what is going on with the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a pact that the United States is negotiating with Australia, Canada, Japan and eight other countries in the Pacific region. The agreement is packaged as a "free trade" agreement. This label will force all of the respectable types in Washington to support it.
In reality, the deal has almost nothing to do with trade: actual trade barriers between these countries are already very low. The TPP is an effort to use the holy grail of free trade to impose conditions and override domestic laws in a way that would be almost impossible if the proposed measures had to go through the normal legislative process. The expectation is that by lining up powerful corporate interests, the governments will be able to ram this new "free trade" pact through legislatures on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
As with all these multilateral agreements, the intention is to spread its reach through time. That means that anything the original parties to the TPP accept is likely to be imposed later on other countries in the region, and quite likely, on the rest of the world.
Government secrets At this point, it's not really possible to discuss the merits of the TPP since the governments are keeping the proposed text a secret from the public. Only the negotiators themselves and a select group of corporate partners have access to the actual document. The top executives at General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and Pfizer probably all have drafts of the relevant sections of the TPP. However, the members of the relevant congressional committees have not yet been told what is being negotiated.
A few items that have been leaked give us some insight as to the direction of this pact. One major focus is will be stronger protection for intellectual property. In the case of recorded music and movies, we might see provisions similar to those that were in the Stop Online Privacy Act (Sopa). This would make internet intermediaries like Google, Facebook and, indeed, anyone with a website into a copyright cop.
Since these measures were hugely unpopular, Sopa could probably never pass as a standalone piece of legislation. But tied into a larger pact and blessed with "free trade" holy water, the entertainment industry may be able to get what it wants.
The pharmaceutical industry is also likely to be a big gainer from this pact. It has decided that the stronger patent rules that it inserted in the 1995 WTO agreement don't go far enough. It wants stronger and longer patent protection and also increased use of "data exclusivity". This is a government-granted monopoly, often as long as 14 years, that prohibits generic competitors from entering a market based on another company's test results that show a drug to be safe and effective.
Note that stronger copyright and patent protection, along with data exclusivity, is the opposite of free trade. They involve increased government intervention in the market; they restrict competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.
In fact, the costs associated with copyright and patent protection dwarf the costs associated with the tariffs or quotas that usually concern free traders. While the latter rarely raise the price of a product by more than 20-30%, patent protection for prescription drugs can allow drugs to sell for hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars per prescription when they would sell for $5-10 as a generic in a free market.
Patent protection
Patent protection increases what patients pay for drugs in the United States by close to $270bn a year (1.8% of GDP). In addition to making drugs unaffordable to people who need them, the economic costs implied by this market distortion are enormous.
There are many other provisions in this pact that are likely to be similarly controversial. The rules it creates would override domestic laws on the environment, workplace safety, and investment. Of course, it's not really possible to talk about the details because there are no publicly available drafts.
In principle, the TPP is exactly the sort of issue that should feature prominently in the fall elections. Voters should have a chance to decide if they want to vote for candidates who support raising the price of drugs for people in the United States and the rest of the world, or making us all into unpaid copyright cops. But there is no text and no discussion in the campaigns – and that is exactly how the corporations who stand to gain want it.
There is one way to spoil their fun. Just Foreign Policy is offering a reward, now up to $21,100, to WikiLeaks if it publishes a draft copy of the pact. People could add to the reward fund, or if in a position to do so, make a copy of the draft agreement available to the world.
Our political leaders will say that they are worried about the TPP text getting in the hands of terrorists, but we know the truth: they are afraid of a public debate. So if the free market works, we will get to see the draft of the agreement.
In honor of Entrepreneur Month, today’s column is an excerpt from my newest eBook, The Characteristics of a Successful Entrepreneur, premiering on Amazon this week.
There is no impediment that seems too great for a successful entrepreneur
Persistence is a vital characteristic of successful entrepreneurs. Driven by an indomitable spirit, successful entrepreneurs never give up on their dreams of building a viable business. There is no impediment too great. This unflagging attribute is a key characteristic of triumphant business builders.
Entrepreneurs face and tackle bewildering and potentially catastrophic situations. They possess courage, hope and a deeply held belief that they can survive the moment and continue to prosper. Personal strength, greatness, self-confidence, maturity and wisdom are by-products gained through unfathomable adversity. It has been said that men become great mariners when sailing on troubled waters, not calm seas. The same axiom applies in the business world.
Serious hardships may be financial in nature. They might also be employee-, client-, vendor- or investor-based. They may arise through human error or market conditions. I can see, in my mind’s eye, the depressed face of an entrepreneur who can’t make payroll or has just lost a substantial client. I can sense an owner’s profound frustration upon learning a product has failed and there is a lawsuit to manage. We can empathize with a founder’s pain when there has been a fire, theft or betrayal. Consider the emotions felt with the death of a spouse or key employee. These occurrences are severe, somewhat common, and require a powerful and thoughtful response.
During my forty years in business, I have experienced several situations that elevated my blood pressure and caused sleepless nights. They were emergencies that had to be resolved or the business would fail. I can recall with clarity, in the early days of MarketStar, a small technology client in Canada that would not send payment for the services we had rendered. Cash from the client was critical to our continuance as a startup company. We had to have the money the client owed us to survive. I repeatedly called the client’s president. I sent multiple messages via fax. He would not respond to my pleas. I was desperate. I wondered what I should do.
I decided to fly to Vancouver to meet him at his office, unannounced. He was startled to see me. “I’m here to collect payment,” I said. “I won’t leave until I have a cashable check for $50,000 in my hand. I will sit in your office as long as it takes.”
A few minutes later, I had what I had come to obtain and returned home satisfied with my actions and the results. Gratefully, MarketStar would not be added to a long list of defunct businesses. A treasured personal motto learned in my youth served me well: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
For some heavy-laden founders, the obstacles are insurmountable and they quit. The dream they pursued comes to an inglorious end. As I visit with former entrepreneurs I have learned that immobilizing doubt and fear rule their thinking. They become paralyzed and unable to act. Disheartened, they feel helpless. They can see no good options, no appropriate answers to their state of affairs.
Having started and failed at four startup businesses myself, I can authentically sympathize with their dilemma. In many cases, the best decision is to turn out the lights and close the doors. For dedicated and persistent entrepreneurs, business failure teaches invaluable lessons — lessons that can be applied in the next venture. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle; it’s an everlasting journey.
Most successful entrepreneurs have started and stopped several ill-conceived enterprises. I know of only a few lucky executives who have launched an award-winning business in their first try. Most of us need multiple attempts. We are, by nature, persistent souls.
If you plan to start your own business or you run one now, may I provide a few suggestions to help you when the going gets tough?
1) Don’t panic. Don’t give up. Be at peace. Have faith. Know you will develop an answer.
2) Take time to ponder and understand the situation. Obtain all the facts. Find out what happened and why.
3) Consider every option and every possibility to solve the problem.
4) Invite a trusted mentor to advise you on the matter.
7) Evaluate the results. If they are unsatisfactory, try something else.
Great leaders are survivors. They have weathered life’s stormy seas. They have moved heaven and earth to accomplish their business goals. They will never give up.
Self-styled porn star Luka Rocco Magnotta has been arrested in a Berlin internet café, where he was identified while watching pornography and reading news stories about the global effort to track him down. His capture came as a relief to Montreal’s Chinese community, following the identification late last week of Wuhan-born student Lin Jun, whom Magnotta allegedly murdered, dismembered and mailed parts of to political parties.
The murder of Mr. Lin has provoked widespread shock and anger in China, where many believe the crime was racially motivated. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa has warned citizens living or travelling in Canada to “strengthen their personal security” in the wake of the deadly attack.
Mr. Lin’s death is the second killing of a Chinese student in Canada in just over a year, following last April’s murder of York University studentLiu Qian, part of which was watched on Skype by her boyfriend back in China.
[…] A makeshift memorial to Mr. Lin sprang up in downtown Montreal in front of the statue of Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon regarded as a hero in China. The foot of the statue was covered with bouquets along with a note in English, French and Chinese that summed up the sense of relief over Mr. Magnotta’s arrest: “We got that beast.”
“The Chinese Embassy in Canada reminds Chinese citizens traveling in Canada, as well as students and the staff of Chinese organizations in Canada, to improve their self-protection [and] awareness, and to strengthen their personal security,” reads the final paragraph of the Embassy’s Chinese-language statement on Mr. Lin’s murder, which called condemned the “heinous criminal act.” A similar warning was posted on the webpage of the Chinese consulate in Montreal.
[…] “The impact of the case will be very bad on Canada,” Meng Xiaochao, the boyfriend who witnessed the attack on Ms. Liu, said in an interview. “Last year when Liu Qian’s case happened, many parents said they were no longer willing to send their children to Canada. Now here comes this other case.”
More than 50,000 Chinese students currently live and study in Canada. Like all foreign students, they pay higher tuition than their Canadian-born classmates, making them highly sought-after by cash-strapped universities. Another 242,000 Chinese came to Canada as tourists last year, a number the travel industry had been hoping would increase by as much as one-fifth this year.
Porn star accused of killing gay ex-lover ate victim's body parts, claim police
Video footage of the suspected Montreal murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta show him eating the body parts of his alleged victim, police said yesterday.
Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafrenière said that while it could not be confirmed, his officers suspected Magnotta of eating parts of the lover he is accused of killing and dismembering.
German prosecutors further revealed yesterday that they intended to extradite Magnotta to Canada following his surprise arrest in Berlin on Monday.
The pornographic-film actor and model, 29, is wanted on suspicion of murdering and dismembering his male Chinese student lover and sending his victim's body parts to political parties in one of Canada's most gruesome killings.
Magnotta fled from Montreal to Berlin via Paris. He was arrested in an internet café in the German capital on Monday morning. Yesterday he appeared before a judge and was remanded in custody until further notice.
Prosecutors said they were awaiting a request from Montreal Police for his extradition. A spokesman said the process could take "several days".
Canadian police have confiscated a film of a man killing his victim with an ice pick. The video is thought to show Magnotta murdering his 33-year-old lover, Jun Lin. His motive is said to have been jealousy. The killer is suspected of dismembering his victim's body and posting parts of the corpse to Canada's Conservative and Liberal parties.
Magnotta is nicknamed "psycho killer" because the soundtrack to the video allegedly showing the murder carried excerpts from the film American Psycho.
Canadian porn actor who killed man and mailed body parts arrested
Berlin: A Canadian porn actor suspected of murdering and dismembering a Chinese student and mailing his body parts to Canada's top political parties was reading about himself on the internet when he was arrested on Monday at a cafe in Berlin.
Canadian investigators say 29-year-old Luka Magnotta's obsessions led him to post internet videos of his killing kittens, then a man, and finally to his arrest at the cafe where he had spent two hours reading media coverage of himself.
An international manhunt set off by a case of internet gruesomeness that captured global attention ended quietly in the working-class Neukoelln district of the German capital when a cafe employee recognised Magnotta from a newspaper photo and flagged down a police car.
Confronted by seven officers, "He tried at first giving fake names but in the end he just said: 'You got me’," said police spokesman Guido Busch. "He didn't resist."
Magnotta is wanted by Canadian authorities on suspicion of killing Jun Lin, a 33-year-old man he dated, in Canada, and mailing his body parts to two of Canada's top political parties before fleeing to Europe.
They say Magnotta filmed the murder of the Chinese student in his Montreal studio apartment and posted it online. The video shows a man with an ice pick stabbing another naked, bound male. He also dismembers the corpse and performs sexual acts with it in what police called a horrifying video.
The warning signs apparently were already there. For nearly two years animal activists had been looking for a man who tortured and killed cats and posted videos of his cruelty online. Since Lin's murder, Montreal police have released a photo from the video which they say is of Magnotta.
In 2005, Magnotta was accused of sexually assaulting a woman, but the charges were dropped, the lawyer who represented him at the time said.
Magnotta is believed to have fled to France on May 26, based on evidence police found at his apartment and a blog he once posted about disappearing.
In Germany, surveillance camera footage of the internet cafe, obtained by the Associated Press, showed Magnotta casually walking in to the shop at noon local time, wearing jeans, a green hoodie sweater and sunglasses.
He briefly spoke to the internet cafe's desk person, then walked off to his assigned computer with the number 25 where he would later be spotted reading the news about his case.
About two hours later, seven German police officers are seen walking into the shop, without any haste or arms.
On the camera footage, three police officers are seen accompanying the handcuffed Magnotta a couple of minutes after they first entered the cafe. Magnotta calmly walks alongside them, again wearing sunglasses.
In Germany, police spokeswoman Kerstin Ziesmer said Magnotta is being questioned, and will be brought before a judge behind closed doors.
"He says he is the wanted person," she added, while cautioning that his identity must still be independently confirmed by German authorities.
Canada, like Europe, has no death penalty, making extradition more likely. Quebec bureau of prosecutions spokesman Rene Verret said it could still take a long time to get him back to Canada, but he said if Magnotta doesn't contest the order he could be returned within a couple of weeks.
The case's full horror emerged when a package containing a severed foot was opened at the ruling Conservative Party headquarters on May 29. That same day a hand was discovered at a postal facility, addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada. And a torso was found in a suitcase on a garbage dump in Montreal, outside Magnotta's apartment building. Police in masks combed through the blood-soaked Montreal studio apartment last Wednesday.
As they unraveled his background, police discovered that Luka Magnotta changed his name from Eric Clinton Newman in 2006 and that he was born in Scarborough, Ontario. He is also known as Vladimir Romanov.
His mother, Anna Yourkin in Peterbourgh, Ontario, said she had no comment, apologised and hung up the phone.
Toronto lawyer Peter Scully said he represented Magnotta in a fraud case in 2004 and a sexual assault case in 2005.
He said Magnotta was charged with a dozen counts of fraud and impersonation for using a woman's credit card to buy about $17,000 worth of goods, including a television, DVD player and several cellphones. He said he pleaded guilty to four fraud-related charges after serving 16 days in pre-trial custody. He received a nine-month conditional sentence and a year of probation.
Scully said Magnotta was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in 2005, but the prosecution decided to withdraw the charges. The woman's father became so irate and threatening that Scully said he wrote a letter to police and the prosecutor, telling them about it.
Scully remembered Magnotta as soft spoken and polite.
"I've had lots of creepy characters and Eric did not stand out as one of them," he said. Scully refers to his client by his previous name, Eric Newman.
But Nina Arsenault, a Toronto transsexual who said she had a relationship with Magnotta over a decade ago, described him as a drug user with a temper, who sometimes turned his anger on himself, hitting himself on the head, and other parts of his body.
While Magnotta described himself in an online video interview with a site called "Naked News" as a stripper and male escort, Lin, who was from Wuhan, China, was registered as an undergraduate in the engineering department and computer science at Concordia University in Montreal. Police have confirmed Magnotta is a porn actor and that he and Jun had a relationship.
Zoya De Frias Lakhany, 21, a fellow Concordia student in some of Lin's classes, said he was an excellent student who was shy and humble. She said she cried all weekend.
"He was happy here, he would take pictures of the snow and post them," she recalled. "He was sweet, never complained and smiled all the time."
Montreal Police Cmdr Ian Lafreniere said investigators are extremely relieved and pleased about the arrest.
"We said from the beginning that the web has been used to glorify himself and we believe the web brought him down," said Lafreniere. "He was recognised because his photo was everywhere."
While the United States remains a great place to do business, it’s been slipping as a place to start a business, according to the World Bank’s annual “Doing Business” publication.
In 2012, the U.S. was the fourth best country in the world to do business in, coming in behind Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand. That’s only slightly worse than we were five years ago before the Great Recession hit.
As a place to start a business, things aren’t as good. It now costs twice as much to start a company as five years ago – 1.4 percent of per capita income versus 0.7 percent.
We are also slipping in how easy it is to start a business as compared to other nations. As the chart below shows, we were fourth in this category in 2007. This year we were number 13.
Source: Created from Data from the World Bank’s “Doing Business” reports, various
The World Bank measures 184 countries, so we don’t need to get out the worry beads yet. Scoring worse than Macedonia, Georgia, Rwanda, Belarus, Saudi Arabia and Armenia might be embarrassing, but few entrepreneurs will choose those countries over the United States. And few American entrepreneurs are moving elsewhere to start companies.
But remaining behind New Zealand, Australia, and Canada year after year should cause those in Washington to take notice. Policies to bring more foreign entrepreneurs to the United States won’t work very well if those entrepreneurs find it easier and cheaper to start their businesses in countries like Australia and Canada.
HMS Bulwark will be part of a flotilla heading to France from Portsmouth
Hirsch: ‘It takes less than RM20,000 to start a new company within MGVD
