NEW DELHI: Yang Jiechi, Chinese foreign minister, has promised to help the two Indian traders stranded in Yiwu as they fight a case with the Chinese suppliers. During a bilateral meeting with foreign minister S M Krishna in Moscow, on the sideline
s of the Russia-India-China trilateral, Krishna asked Yang to intervene because the two traders are running out of money, the case is dragging on and the duo has had to resort to spending nights on the streets.
Sources quoted Yang as saying the issue was with the Chinese judicial authorities, but that the government had conveyed to them the concerns of the Indian government. He said the Chinese foreign ministry “would play a positive role” to help resolve the issue, Yang told Krishna.
Krishna met Chinese Yang in Moscow on the sidelines of the trilateral meeting of foreign ministers of India, Russia and China. It was the third meeting of foreign ministers this year. It signifies the intensive high-level interaction that characterizes India-China ties and the importance that both sides place on the relationship.
The hour-long meeting focused on several bilateral and multilateral issues. Official sources said, the ministers stressed the importance of an early meeting of an India-China Maritime Dialogue, which was decided during the last round of special representative talks in New Delhi.
India and China have also decided to start dialogues on Central Asia, West Asia and Africa. The ministers said it would be finalized soon. They also agreed to resume the India-China dialogue on Disarmament and Non Proliferation. This decision is interesting in the light of the North Korean test on Friday and Pakistan’s continued building of its nuclear arsenal.
In a follow-up of Hu Jintao’s discussions in New Delhi last month, Yang told Krishna that Beijing would encourage their companies to invest infrastructure projects in India.
Late last month, the traders, Shyamsundar Agarwal and Deepak Raheja, who are in the centre of the dispute in Yiwu, were evicted from the hotel they were staying in because they had run out of money. After they were `kidnapped’ by Chinese suppliers in Yiwu last December for over two weeks, the traders had been supported by the Indian Consulate in Shanghai. They duo has asked the MEA to support them while they are stuck in China.
Their plight came to light only when an Indian diplomat, who had gone to secure their release, fainted after being disallowed from leaving by Chinese negotiators.
Spanking found to have negative effects on low-income toddlers
Washington, September 16 (ANI): Spanking negatively affects the behaviour of toddlers in low-income families, according to a new study.
Published in the journal Child Development, the longitudinal study looked at how low-income parents discipline their young children.
It showed that spanking 1-year-olds leads to more aggressive behaviours and less sophisticated cognitive development in the next two years.
Verbal punishment, however, was not found to be associated with such effects, especially when it was accompanied by emotional support from mothers.
Besides, 1-year-olds’ fussiness predicted spanking and verbal punishment at ages 1, 2, and 3.
The study explored whether mothers’ behaviours lead to problematic behaviour in children, whether children’s challenging behaviours elicit harsher discipline, or both.
It looked at more than 2,500 exclusively low-income White, African American, and Mexican-American mothers and their young children, interviewing and observing them at home when the children were 1, 2, and 3 years old.
All participants’ family incomes were at or below the federal poverty level.
Using their own interpretations of spanking, mothers reported how often anyone in the home had spanked their children in the past week.
The study also looked at how often mothers verbally punished-scolded, yelled, or made negative comments-their children.
It showed that African American children were spanked and verbally punished significantly more than the other children in the study.
The authors speculated that that might be due to cultural factors, such as belief in the importance of children’s respect for elders and in the value of physical discipline to instil that respect.
Moreover, some African American mothers said that in preparing their children for a harsh, physically dangerous, and racially discriminating world, there was little room for error in their childrearing.
The study also shed light on information about the effects of such types of discipline.
“Our findings clearly indicate that spanking affects children’s development,” said Lisa J. Berlin, research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University and the study’s lead author.
Specifically, children who were spanked more often at 1 behaved more aggressively when they were 2, and had lower scores on tests measuring thinking skills when they were 3.
Similar findings were made even after taking into consideration such family characteristics as mothers’ race and ethnicity, age, and education; family income and structure; and the children’s gender.
The study also found that children who were more aggressive at age 2, and had lower cognitive development scores at ages 1 and 2, were not spanked more at ages 2 and 3.
“So the mothers’ behaviours look more influential than the children’s,” said Berlin.
Unlike spanking, however, verbal punishment alone didn’t affect either children’s aggression or their cognitive development.
Interestingly, when verbal punishment was accompanied by emotional support from moms, the children did better on the tests of cognitive ability. (ANI)