Greece hit by third general strike in a month | ||||||
BBC ,07:24 GMT, Thursday, 11 March 2010Public services and transport in Greece have ground to a halt as workers stage a third general strike in protest at the government's austerity measures. Flights are grounded, and schools and hospitals closed in the 24-hour walk-out called by the two largest unions. The government says it sympathises with public anger over tax rises and wage cuts, but is refusing to back down. The head of the employers' federation has accused the strikers of trying to make Greece into a charity case. The country currently has a spiralling public deficit of 12.7%, more than four times higher than eurozone rules allow. The government has pledged to cut this to 8.7% this year, and also reduce the 300bn-euro ($409bn; £273bn) national debt, by cutting public sector salaries, raising the average retirement age, and increasing sales taxes. 'Deep freeze' Strikes and violent demonstrations have erupted since the measures were announced last month.
In the latest action, air traffic controllers have closed the country's airspace for 24 hours and ferries are stuck in harbours as maritime unions join the strike. Officers from the police, fire and customs services are also due to join the street protests. Buses and trams will not operate in Athens or the second city of Thessaloniki throughout the day. The strike is being organised by the private sector union, GSEE, and its public sector sister union, ADEDY, who together represent half of the country's five million workers. Unions say the European Union-backed austerity plan will only hurt the poor and aggravate the recession-hit country's economic problems. "They are trying to make workers pay the price for this crisis," GSEE leader Yiannis Panagopoulos told the Associated Press. "These measures will not be effective and will throw the economy into deep freeze."
Potential rebels within the governing Socialist party who have objected to the belt-tightening have been forced to toe the official line, says the BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens. Dimitris Daskalopoulos, the head of Greece's employers' association, denounced the street protests in his first major public pronouncement. He said the government had no alternative but to reform the country and accused strikers of wanting to maintain the deplorable conditions that had forced Greece to look for charity from foreign markets. "Between bankruptcy and recession, between the devil and the deep blue sea, there is no other alternative to the abyss," he told reporters. "It is necessary to start again and to reform the country." Budget crunch Demonstrations are planned in Athens and other major cities. Last Friday, Athens saw its most serious unrest since the financial crisis began, as MPs approved the government's austerity measures.
Rock-throwing protesters outside parliament clashed with police, who used tear gas to disperse them. Another general strike has been called for 16 March. By spring, Greece must refinance a large chunk of its national debt or risk defaulting on its loans. Concerns about its giant debts currently make it more expensive for Greece to borrow money compared with most other European nations. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is seeking assistance from fellow eurozone nations to make it cheaper to borrow funds on the international financial markets. European Union leaders have pledged to help Greece, but have not outlined any concrete measures. During a visit to Washington on Tuesday, Mr Papandreou also appealed to US President Barack Obama to crack down on speculators, who he said were trying to undermine Greece. "It is very important to stabilise international markets and to not allow the crises that may occur... to be used to create wider destabilisation, either of the eurozone or of the world financial system," he said.  | ||||||
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Greece, third general strike..[ 721 ]
Between bankruptcy and recession, between the devil and the deep blue sea, there is no other alternative to the abyss 
Ahmadinejad,double game in Afghanistan..[ 720 ]
Iran leader: US playing 'game' in Afghanistan
Click for ...Full story: www.google.com
Taking aim at the U.S., Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that it's the United States that is playing a "double game" in Afghanistan, fighting terrorists it once supported.
"I believe that they themselves," who are now fighting militants in Afghanistan, "are playing a double game," he said. "They themselves created terrorists and now they're saying that they are fighting terrorists.The tiny city of Châteaubriant..[ 719 ]
Chateaubriant, France
Posted March 10, 2010
Recommend this imageVestiges of Medieval Brittany mingle with signs of modern civilization in this simulated natural color satellite image of Châteaubriant, France. The small city is silver, colored by light bouncing off the reflective surfaces of modern times. The surrounding country is an irregular patchwork of small fields, reflecting land use in the Middle Ages.
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired the image on November 5, 2007. The image does not show what you would see if you were in an airplane over the city like a natural color satellite image would, but rather, it shows the region in a combination of visible and infrared light. Plant-covered land is still green and water is dark blue, so this particular combination is called simulated natural color.
By late November, crops had been harvested and many of the fields were bare. The exposed soil ranges from pale tan to brown in the image. Other fields (possibly pastures) remained green, even late in the year. Patches of forest on the right and lower edges of the image are brown and dark green.
The tiny city of Châteaubriant is in northwest France on the Chère and Rollard rivers. The town developed around a castle built in the 11th century as part of Brittany’s defensive line against France. The city now has a population of about 13,000.
References
- Wikipedia. (2010, March 1). Châteaubriant. Accessed March 9, 2010.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Old Tree knocked down by wind [ 718 ]
1,000-year old tree in front of Kamakura shrine knocked down by strong winds
KAMAKURA, Kangagawa -- A 1,000-year-old giant ginkgo tree in front of the main hall of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine here has been knocked down, apparently by strong winds.
At around 4:40 a.m. on Wednesday, a security guard at the shrine found the famous tree -- designated as a natural monument by Kanagawa Prefecture in 1955 -- knocked down with its trunk snapped. It is believed to have been hit by a series of strong winds that continued from late Tuesday afternoon. There were no reports of injuries.
According to the shrine, the 30-meter-high ginkgo tree is estimated to be 1,000 years old. The security guard reportedly heard a loud thumping sound, like that of "heavy covering of snow falling to the ground," about three times at around 4:15 a.m. After hearing a sound like a lightening strike, he found the tree collapsed on the ground.
The maximum wind velocity at that time was 12 meters per second, according to the Fire Fighting Head Office in Kamakura.
Chikayasu Hamano, a professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture, attributed a blizzard from late Tuesday afternoon as the main cause of the tree's collapse, in addition to heavy rain from February that softened the ground. Hamano also commented that it is impossible to save the tree.
At the end of 2009, the shrine started to consider conservation steps for the giant tree, with inspections by Hamano finding no problems with the health of the tree.
Shigeho Yoshida, the chief priest of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, is too shocked to comment on the matter, a shrine official said. Other priests, who are also in shock, made spiritual gestures by offering rice and sake to the collapsed tree.
The giant ginkgo tree, well known as a symbol of the shrine, was dubbed "Kakure Icho" (hidden ginkgo) since monk Kugyo hid behind the tree when he assassinated Minamoto no Sanetomo, the third shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate, in January 1219.
(Mainichi Japan) March 10, 2010
The 10/3 NASA "Image of the Day".[ 717 ]
On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of 195 kilometers, or 122 miles, and at a relative speed of 34,540 kilometers per hour, or more than 22,000 mph. In contrast to optical cameras, radar does not 'see' surfaces. Instead, it is much more aware of the edges and corners which bounce back the microwave signal it transmits. Smooth surfaces such as those on the station's solar generators or the radiator panels used to dissipate excess heat, unless directly facing the radar antenna, tend to deflect rather than reflect the radar beam, causing these features to appear on the radar image as dark areas. The radar image of the station therefore looks like a dense collection of bright spots from which the outlines of the space station can be clearly identified. The central element on the station, to which all the modules are docked, has a grid structure that presents a multiplicity of reflecting surfaces to the radar beam, making it readily identifiable. This image has a resolution of about one meter (about 39 inches). In other words, objects can be depicted as discrete units--that is, shown separately--provided that they are at least one meter apart. If they are closer together than that, they tend to merge into a single block on a radar image. Since this image as taken, the station has expanded and is more than 90 percent complete, including a full complement of solar arrays. Image Credit: DLR
Τετάρτη, 10 Μάρτιος 2010 7:00:00 πμ