France, - immigrant crackdown..[ 1592 ]

Sarkozy's approval ratings rise after immigrant crackdown

A recent poll has shown that French President Nicolas Sarkozy's popularity crept two points higher to 34 percent following a recent highly publicised crackdown on illegal immigrants.

By News Wires (text)

 

REUTERS -

Latest update: 08/08/2010 

President Nicolas Sarkozy's popularity inched higher after he announced tough new measures against crime and illegal immigration, but more than half of voters say he is still not tackling the country's problems.
 
A poll published on Saturday in daily newspaper Le Parisien showed the percentage of French people who trusted Sarkozy rose to 34 percent in early August, two percentage points higher than the previous month's poll.
 
However, 61 percent of voters said they did not trust the 55-year-old conservative leader, who is widely expected to seek a second five-year term in 2012 despite his weak poll ratings.
 
Prime Minister Francois Fillon, seen as a possible challenger to Sarkozy from within the ruling UMP party, fared better, with 40 percent saying they trusted him while 54 percent did not. Fillon may be replaced in a cabinet reshuffle which the president has announced for October.
 
The telephone poll of 1,002 people was conducted on Aug. 4-5, a week after Sarkozy launched his plans for a security crackdown during a visit to the southeastern city of Grenoble, the scene of mid-July riots sparked by the death of a man of Arab origin who was fleeing from police.
 
A poll published on Thursday showed French people overwhelmingly support the tough new measures proposed by Sarkozy, himself the son of a Hungarian father and French mother of Greek Jewish origin.
 
Thursday's survey said some 89 percent of people favoured Sarkozy's plan to force criminals to wear electronic tags for years after committing a crime, while 70 percent backed an initiative to strip French nationality from people with immigrant roots found guilty of killing a policeman.
 
"I will present proposals before the end of the month for legal measures to implement the withdrawal of nationality from those who kill public officials, practice polygamy or excision (female circumcision)," Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said on Saturday.
 
He added that he would consult with Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who has expressed public doubts about the legality of the move.

FIRST BIG ROMA EVICTION

Opposition parties, human rights groups and unions announced this week that they would stage major demonstrations across France on Sept. 4 to protest against the measures, which they say are xenophobic.

Critics say the measures are populist steps aimed at diverting attention from a series of recent setbacks for the government, which has been rocked by allegations of illegal political donations from L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt as well as last month's riots in two towns.

Labour Minister Eric Woerth, the man at the heart of the funding scandal, has vigorously denied any wrongdoing.

On Friday, scores of police dismantled an illegal camp of 135 Roma in the central French city of Saint-Etienne, giving them a one-month ultimatum to leave the country.

It was the first high-profile eviction since the government launched a plan in late July to dismantle 300 illegal camps of travellers and Roma, which it says are linked to crime, prostitution and drug trafficking.

Massive iceberg afloat..[ 1591 ]

Massive iceberg afloat

Updated: 02:50, Monday August 9, 2010

An iceberg, 40 times larger than Australia's Uluru, has broken off a glacier in Greenland.
Scientists say the iceberg will either move south down the Arctic Ocean, break into smaller pieces or fuse to land.
If it moves south, the iceberg has the potential to block shipping.
Scientists have not confirmed if climate change caused the breakage.

Pakistan : Prime Minister visits flooded areas.. [ 1590 ]

Pakistani PM visits flooded areas

A man hands over his daughter to a naval rescue boat as he wades through floodwaters in Sukkur in Pakistan's Sindh province August 8, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Akhtar Soomro

By Faisal Aziz

ROHRI | Sun Aug 8, 2010 11:59am EDT

ROHRI Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani navy boats sped across miles of flood waters Sunday as the military took a lead role in rescuing survivors from a devastating disaster that has killed 1,600 people and left two million homeless.

The Pakistani military has maintained a dominant role in foreign and security policy even during civilian rule, and has come to the fore during natural disasters, such as in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake.

The civilian government has meanwhile appeared overwhelmed and President Asif Ali Zardari has been singled out for criticism for not remaining on an official visit to Europe as the country suffered its worst floods in 80 years.

But analysts do not expect the government's heavily criticized handling of the crisis to encourage the military, which has ruled for more than half of Pakistan's history, to try to seize power.

Heavy rain is forecast to further lash the country in the next 36 hours.

Rubber and wooden navy boats set out from areas in Sindh province, where flood waters burst from the Indus River across vast distances, to help Pakistanis who have watched safe ground shrink by the hour and waters swallow up their livestock.

"We have been doing this for several days," said navy officer Akhter Mahmood after his boat travelled through about 20 km (12 miles) of flood water.

Women, chest-deep in water, carried chickens and clothes on their heads before entering navy boats. "I thought the waters would go away," said Sakina. "I want to come back."

Zardari drew fire for leaving the country for official visits in Europe during the crisis. He said the prime minister was handling the catastrophe and informing him of developments.

GETTING WORSE

Floods wiped out Mohammad Saleem's home and grocery store in the village of Kot Addu. "We have not received any help from the government so far and I am sure any foreign help that will come will never reach us," he said.

Even though relief efforts may have improved the military's standing, and widened the perception that Pakistani civilian governments are too weak and inefficient to cope with disasters, analysts do not see any threat to the current administration.

The army is busy fighting Taliban insurgents and does not want to be strapped with Pakistan's enormous problems; from costly rebuilding after the floods, to the struggle to attract foreign investment in a troubled economy, to widespread poverty.

"I don't think they are willing to dump Zardari," said Kamran Bokhari, Regional Director, Middle East and South Asia at global intelligence firm STRATFOR.

"The current army leadership ... is very clear that there is a war that needs to be waged."

Foreign aid organizations, also playing a much bigger role than the government, say weather has hampered relief efforts.

Floodwaters have roared down from the northwest to the agricultural heartland of Punjab and on to southern Sindh along a trail more than 1,000 km (600 miles) long.

The flooding, brought on by unusually strong monsoon rains, has destroyed 360,000 houses, aid groups say.

"We are very concerned because the situation is getting worse and worse," said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian relief will be needed in the coming months alone, he said. Billions may be needed to rebuild infrastructure in the long term.

In Punjab alone, 1.4 million acres of land was destroyed. The economy, which depends heavily on agriculture and foreign aid, has taken a major hit.

In some areas, only the tops of trees and telephone poles are visible. Pakistanis fighting to hold on to anything they can walked waist-deep in water carrying logs from their shattered homes.

Even before the floods, Pakistan was struggling to tame inflation that averaged 11.7 percent for the last fiscal year. In Swat Valley, one of the hardest hit areas, tomato prices have more than tripled since the floods hit.

"Our country has gone back several years," Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters on a visit to Sindh province.

In Punjab, hundreds of people were evacuated from drenched areas to a railway track on higher ground.

"What we are wearing is all that we have, the rest is all gone -- our house, animals, wheat we had stored, everything has been destroyed," university student Fiza Batool said as she fed her 10-year-old sister biscuits.

(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony in Islamabad, Adrees Latif and Asim Tanveer in Muzaffargarh; Myra MacDonald in London, and Sayed Salahuddin in KABUL; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Tension remains high, with South and North Korea ..[ 1589 ]

North Korea 'detains fishing boat from South'

 

 Tension remains high, with South Korean exercises in the Yellow Sea

 

( BBC )8 August 2010 Last updated at 11:22 GMT 

A South Korean fishing boat missing in the Sea of Japan has been detained by the North, coastguard officials say.

The officials said the crew of the Daeseung was being investigated by North Korean authorities.

Tension remains high between the Koreas amid a naval exercise carried out by the South in the Yellow Sea.

The exercises were a show of force after the North was blamed for sinking a Southern warship in March.

'Physical retaliation'

Authorities in the boat's home South Korean port of Pohang said the Daeseung had stopped sending signals after a fishing trip in the Sea of Japan, known in Korea as the East Sea, on Saturday.

The South Korean coastguard said in a statement: "We have found out that our fishing vessel is being investigated by North Korean officials in the presumed North Korea exclusive economic waters in the northern East Sea.

"The South Korean government, according to international law, wants the swift resolution to the matter and the safe return of its vessel and its fisherman."

The vessel has four South Koreans and three Chinese on board.

Media reports in the South say the Daeseung is being towed to the Northern port of Songjin.

North Korean media has so far made no comment on the latest reports.

There have been frequent incidents in recent years involving fishing boats of both sides in the disputed waters.

 

Wreckage of the Cheonan. Its sinking has caused huge tension

The North, which denied any involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan warship in March with the loss of 46 sailors, had pledged "strong physical retaliation" for the five-day naval exercises.

The South also recently carried out massive naval exercises with US forces in the Sea of Japan.

The latest exercises, in the Yellow Sea, are the South's biggest-ever anti-submarine drills, with some 4,500 personnel taking part near the disputed maritime border.

The South said that although its ships would stay clear of the disputed boundary, marines stationed on islands close to the border would conduct live-fire exercises.

In North Korea's official media, a statement attributed to military leaders called the exercises a "direct military invasion aimed at infringing upon the DPRK's [North Korea's] right to self-defence".

Russia, Wildfires still raging across the country..[ 1588 ]

Wildfires still raging across Russia

1 of 1

Residents walk amid the debris of their burnt houses, as they search for their belongings and remove burnt items, with heavy smog shrouding the village of Laskovo, about 250km southeast of the capital in Ryazan region, August 8 2010. Forest and peat fires by the highest temperatures ever registered in Russia have killed at least 52 people, made more than 4000 homeless, diverted many flights and forced Muscovites to wear surgical masks to filter out foul air.
Photo: Reuters

 

( VOA ), Sun, Aug 08 2010 12:35 CET  

byJessica Golloher 256 Views

 

Wildfires are raging across Russia as the country experiences the hottest temperatures on record. Russia's Emergency Ministry officials say 52 people are dead, thousands of homes have been destroyed and crops across the country have been devastated. The Russian government has admitted that it can't get some of the blazes under control, as ordinary citizens are trying to save their property and belongings. 

Her face covered in soot, her clothes filthy and her hair slicked back from sweat, Anya Kirilova appears sad and exhausted as she looks out across her family's property as fires blaze about 91 meters away.

The only thing that separates her family's summer home from the flames, is a less than one-meter wide trench she and her father dug themselves.

The young woman's eyes water from the smoke as she describes her family's ordeal to try and get the fire department to come and help save what she calls an eight-year labor of love.

"We couldn't even reach them by the phone. Not the forest government company, not the fire company. They just didn't answer the phone. We called them 10 times, every half an hour. Then they just said they couldn't do anything. We have only two cars, bla, bla, bla," she said.

The family's dacha is near Pavlovo Pasad, in the Moscow region, just 68 kilometers away from Russia's capital.

Valarey Gevardarsky is with the 110th fire brigade. He says he understands Kirilova's frustration, but he's in charge of seven other regions and he's got outdated equipment. He says he only has four trucks and only two hold water. Making matters even more difficult, he says the trucks must drive to a well in order to get water.

He says the well is more than three kilometers away, there is nothing closer. He says the trucks have to spit out the water, and then go back and refuel, making putting out the fires even more difficult.

Gevardarsky also says Russia doesn't have enough qualified firefighters to even begin to tackle some 300 fires that have been sprouting up daily across the country,  since the blazes began.

He says, if we had more people, we'd get better results. He says his department has been rounding up about 10 workers a day, and that's just not enough to help.

The latest government statistics show that Russia only has some 10,000 firefighters. As a result, the Kremlin has recruited hundreds of thousands of untrained volunteers to help battle the blazes.

Valery Tarasav is one of them. He's wearing shorts, no shirt and flip-flops. Smoking a cigarette, he throws a bucket of water on one of the fires that is quickly encroaching on a home in Kirilova's neighborhood.

"I'm not here to think. I'm just here to do," he said. "Our president has asked for our help in protecting what's ours and that's why he's here, to protect his family." 

Meanwhile, for the first time since the blazes began, Russian authorities are now admitting that they can't get the fires under control.

Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu stopped short of admitting that the country lacked the proper equipment, infrastructure and manpower to combat the blazes, saying only that Russia will buy more equipment for the future.

He says the Kremlin will buy eight planes over the next two years, in addition to helicopters. He says squadrons will also be created across the country, so that things like this don't happen in the future.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has also urged Shoigu to create a separate program to finance technical equipment for all firefighters, saying that because the climate is changing, Russia may need more technical assistance in the future.

Back in Pavlovo Pasad, Anya Kirilova says the promise of equipment to stop future forest fires does her no good, because right now, she needs a system that works.

"In the United States, when I was there, I lived in some dormitory.  Some guys tried to cook popcorn in microwave; smoke indicators reacted and fire machines came in five minutes. They told us to leave the building. They did everything, they checked everything. I felt safe even though it's not even my country. Our country's government, it's not their forest. They don't care," she said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently criticized authorities for not doing more to stop the damage and promised to fire anyone who didn't do their part to combat the blazes.

Forecasters say temperatures are expected to remain near 40 degrees Celsius for at least the next week, with no rain in sight.
Source: VOANews.com