The European Union's consumer chief dismissed fears she intends to introduce US-style class action lawsuits to member states next year as part of her strategy to strengthen consumer rights.

EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Meglena Kuneva announced in March that she hoped to introduce a new system of "collective redress" aimed at giving European consumers more power to bring claims against providers of faulty goods or services.

But she dismissed claims that she proposed to copy the US system, where class action laws have allowed lawyers to create a thriving litigation industry seeking colossal damages against companies.

Class actions have been criticised in the US as letting enterprising law firms win big fees while often generating little return for the individuals concerned.

He was decreed too emotionally unstable to carry a weapon _ a humiliation, he says, designed to corner him into quitting. For 500 days, he was ordered to sit alone in a tiny room at the Ehime Prefectural Police.

"I became a policeman because I wanted to help powerless people. But when I got in, I learned it was totally different," said Semba, 58.

He was passed over for promotions after he refused to fake receipts and is still a sergeant after 34 years. "I wear that title proudly _ like a medal," Semba said.

Whistleblowers like Semba have been especially solitary in Japan, where conformity and respect for hierarchy are venerated as tradition. They have suffered in silence, labeled as traitors.

That is gradually changing. As Japan modernizes, people increasingly see themselves as individuals and consumers, with a duty to speak up against wrongdoing.

Whistleblowers are behind the spate of recent scandals embroiling a pastry maker that forged manufacturing dates, a builder that cheated on fireproofing tests and a meat processor that sold a mixture of meats and chicken as pure ground beef.

Reports to the government of suspicious food manufacturing, nearly all from insiders, have skyrocketed from some 100 a month last year to 697 last month, food safety official Yosuke Abe said.

Semba won personal vindication in September when a court awarded him $8,800 in damages, ruling that his on-the-job treatment was retaliation for his 2004 exposure of police corruption. The police are appealing the ruling.

Semba couldn't hold back tears when his court ruling was read.

"I felt there's justice in this world," he said.

Although the award is small by U.S. standards, it is a major victory in Japan, where court-ordered damage compensation tends to be minimal and the value of whistleblowers is barely starting to be recognized.

The first law to protect whistleblowers passed only last year, but critics say it's inadequate. It requires whistleblowers to first tell their employer and wait before going public if they hope to get any protection.

Whistleblowers have been rare because Japanese companies, even major ones, are run like families, and individual workers don't see themselves as hired by contract as do American workers, says Koji Igata, business administration professor at Osaka University of Economics.

"Whistleblowers are seen as eccentrics who've turned on their parents," he said.

Japan modernized over the last half-century by fostering corporate loyalty in return for secure employment. So when a company runs into trouble, good workers are expected to defend it; exposing wrongdoing is viewed as betrayal.

Only in recent years, as Japanese companies hire lower-paid younger workers and drop job guarantees in response to global competition, has the idea of criticizing an employer started to catch on, said Igata, who studies U.S. corporate governance.

Japan is slowly starting to change as individuals start to see themselves more as consumers and investors, he said.

Calls to strengthen corporate ethics are on the rise, partly from grassroots movements but also from companies eager to catch up with the rest of the world in governance standards.

The increasing influx of part-time workers has also contributed to eroding the ties of loyalty that discouraged whistleblowers.

Akafuku, the pastry maker targeted as a result of a whistleblower, employed about 250 part-time workers, half of its work force. It was shut down after it was found to be reselling unsold pastries shipped back from stores as new ones.

Hiroaki Kushioka, who exposed price-rigging at his trucking company 30 years ago, was one of Japan's pioneer whistleblowers. He was confined for years to a closet-like office, denied promotion and pressured to quit. He often spent his time gardening or shoveling snow at work.

He sued for damages in 2002, and won a landmark victory in 2005. The attention his court case received has been critical in raising public awareness about social responsibility.

"Back in those days, we were seen as informants and rats," said Kushioka, who retired last year. "It may be happening way too late, but finally the idea of the public good is starting to take root in Japan."

The biggest corporate scandals of the last decade in Japan were brought to light by whistleblowers _ the systematic cover-up of defects at Mitsubishi Motors Corp., the illicit pocketing of government subsidies at Snow Brand Foods and the cover-up of nuclear power plant defects at Tokyo Electric Power Co.

The examples set by high-profile whistleblowers like Kushioka and Semba are providing courage for others to come forward.

But Japan still lags behind the West nations in recognizing their status.

American whistleblowers can become heroes with book deals and lecture tours. They can even collect a portion of what the federal government recovers if they expose overcharging by contractors.

The lonely tales of Japanese whistleblowers are a stunning testament to a culture that is docile on the surface but ruthless to those who dare to question authority.

Akiko Tamura, 63, a former public servant who tried to expose the misuse of donations eight years ago, recalls how hard it was to endure yelling from bosses and heckling from co-workers.

Akiko Tamura, 63, who eight years ago tried to expose the misuse of donations at a welfare section of the local government in southern Japan, recalls how hard it was to endure yelling from bosses and heckling from co-workers.

"I thought about killing myself so many times. I had to watch others get promoted. And I never thought I did anything wrong," she said.

Two years after retirement, Tamura still has nightmares. "I don't think I'll ever get over it," she said.

Semba, still a railway policeman, says he is donating his lawsuit money to an ombudsman charity because money was never the goal of his career-long battle.

But what made it all worth it was an elderly woman, who recognized him at a highway rest stop where he had stopped for a cup of coffee.

"She told me, 'You made sacrifices for us. I must thank you,'" he said. "She understood everything."

A sixth man was sentenced to life in prison by the Intermediate Court in Kashgar on Friday. Xinhua said the six were convicted of charges ranging from illegally making explosives to leading a terrorist organization.

Chinese authorities say militants among the Uighurs — Turkic-speaking Muslims — are leading a violent Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang and are seeking to set up an independent state in the Central Asia border province.

"In order to split the nation ... they carried out extreme religious activities and advocated holy war and established a terrorist training base," Xinhua said of the six.

Critics accuse Beijing of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uighur identity.

About 1.5 percent of China's 1.3 billion people are Muslim, according to the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report. But not all of them are Uighurs or live in Xinjiang.

A man who answered the phone at the Intermediate Court confirmed the sentences but said he had no other details. He refused to give his name. A call to the city government office rang unanswered.

Xinhua said the six men "recruited dozens of terrorists and sent them to 'Black Valley Training Camp' to undergo nearly two months of secret training." It did not say what the training camp was.

It also said the six men killed a police officer when they were arrested. It did not say when they were arrested.

China has cracked down hard on anyone it feels is challenging its authority in Xinjiang. In February, U.S. broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported that China had executed another Muslim, Ismail Semed, in the region on charges of trying to split the country.

Turkey's prime minister said Tuesday increased military action against separatist Kurdish rebels was "unavoidable" and pressed the United States for a crackdown on guerrilla bases in northern Iraq.

Turkish helicopters pounded rebel positions near the border with rockets for a second day and Turkey brought in troops by the truckload in an operation against mountainside emplacements.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told members of his party in parliament "it is now unavoidable that Turkey will have to go through a more intensive military process."

But he also suggested he was not seeking an immediate cross-border offensive against the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, holed up in bases in northern Iraq. "The responsibility of leadership does not allow for narrow mindedness, haste or heroism," he said.

"We must remember that Turkey is part of this world and diplomacy has certain requirements," Erdogan added, suggesting the world expected Turkey to exhaust all nonmilitary options.

Erdogan flies to Washington on Nov. 5 for talks with President Bush that could be key to whether Turkey carries out its threat of a major military incursion. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is also expected in Turkey later this week.

"We will openly express that we expect urgent steps from the United States, which is our strategic partner and ally and has a special responsibility regarding Iraq," Erdogan said.

The United States, Iraq and other countries have been calling on Turkey to refrain from a cross-border campaign, which could throw one of the few stable areas in Iraq into chaos. A Turkish incursion would also put the United States in an awkward position with key allies: NATO-member Turkey, the Baghdad government and the self-governing Iraqi Kurds in the north.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Bush's discussions with Erdogan would include "the fight against terrorism _ in particular our joint efforts to counter the PKK."

Turkish Cobra attack helicopters blasted suspected PKK targets in the Mount Cudi area, near the southeastern border with Iraq for a second day, trying to hunt down some 100 rebels believed to be hiding in mountainside caves, the private Dogan news agency reported.

The fighting has claimed the lives of three Turkish soldiers and six guerrillas, local news reports said.

Transport helicopters flew in commando units to block possible rebel escape routes on Cudi, Dogan reported.

An AP Television News cameraman said attack helicopters escorted four Black Hawk helicopters on Cudi, as they airlifted soldiers to the mountain and picked others up. Smoke could be seen rising from areas that had been hit in the attacks.

Dogan reported a 100-vehicle military convoy traveling from Cizre toward the border.

A Kurdish political party warned that the fighting threatened to increase animosity between the Turkish and Kurdish populations in Turkey.

Turkey is "moving toward a dangerous war in our region which will seriously damage historical relations between Turks and Kurds," Nurettin Demirtas, a senior party official, told reporters.

Erdogan's Cabinet scheduled a meeting for Wednesday to discuss possible economic measures against groups supporting the Kurdish rebels.

Deputy Prime Minister Hayati Yazici said Turkey was considering a series of sanctions against the self-governing Kurdish administration in Iraq's north.

Yazici would not give any details, but the Iraqi region is heavily reliant on Turkish electricity and food imports, as well as Turkish investment in construction. There has been talk of shutting down the Habur border crossing _ the only vehicular route into Iraq from Turkey.

Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the Iraqi Kurd regional government, complained that economic sanctions "would represent a collective punishment against Kurdistan's people."

He warned that Turkey and the U.S. Army also would suffer if the border crossing was closed. About 70 percent of U.S. air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey, as does about one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military there.

In an interview printed Tuesday in Turkey's Milliyet newspaper, Massoud Barzani, the leader of Iraq's Kurdish region, called for a peaceful solution to the crisis. He said that if the PKK did not give up violence, it would "confront not only Turkey but the whole Kurdish nation."

But he questioned Turkey's motives, suggesting it is interested in targeting not only the PKK but also Iraqi Kurds.

At least 46 people have been killed by the PKK in Turkey over the past month, according to government and media reports. Those included at least 30 Turkish soldiers killed in two ambushes that were the boldest attacks in years and increased domestic pressure on Erdogan to act.

A Brazilian judge has extended a term of temporary custody for six people connected with Cisco, the US technology giant accused of tax fraud, and imprisoned a further three people accused of involvement in the alleged scheme.

Some 40 people were arrested on October 16 after a two-year investigation involving police, public prosecutors and tax authorities. A former president and three serving senior executives of Cisco in Brazil, including its president, were held for five days. The former president was among six people retained in custody after the initial period and is among those held again on Friday.

Authorities say Cisco and its agents constructed a complex system of real and phantom companies to avoid import duties and other taxes amounting to R$1.5bn over the past five years. Cisco said it did not believe its employees had acted inappropriately and was co-operating with investigations.

In addition to Cisco executives, those arrested included employees of Cisco's main distributor in Brazil and of companies based at a technology park in Brazil's north-east. Also arrested were customs agents and tax inspectors.

Brazil, which is considered a key emerging market for Cisco along with Russia, India and China, accounts for about 1 per cent of Cisco's overall business, according to the company.

Officials said that over the past five years about 50 tonnes of goods had been imported each month under the alleged scheme at a declared total value of $500m. They said initial estimates put the amount of tax evaded at about R$1.5bn.