Netherlands heads for minority government..[ 1554 ]

Netherlands heads for first postwar minority government

 

The Netherlands' center-right Liberal Party, led by Mark Rutte, shown in this file photo casting his ballot in general elections June 9, 2010, is in talks to forge a coalition for a three-party government with Maxime Verhagen's Christian Democratic Appeal, backed by the outside support of Geert Wilders's anti-Islam Freedom Party. (AP Photo/Evert-Jan Daniels)

By Benjamin Birnbaum - The Washington Times

5:48 p.m., Friday, July 30, 2010

 

Wilders

The Netherlands appears on track to have its first minority government since World War II, Dutch party leaders announced Friday.

The arrangement would see Mark Rutte's victorious Liberal Party forge a coalition with Maxime Verhagen's Christian Democratic Appeal, backed by the outside support of Geert Wilders' anti-Islam Freedom Party. The news comes after a week of informal talks among the men that explored the possibility of a formal majority coalition comprising their three right-wing parties.

Dutch voters went to the polls June 8 and delivered the most fractious outcome in decades.

The Liberals won 31 out of the 150 seats in the lower house of parliament, up from 22 seats in 2006. The Labor Party won 30 seats, and the Freedom Party won 24 seats, up from nine seats in 2006. The ruling Christian Democrats, then led by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende--who resigned as party leader after the vote--won 21 seats, down from 41 seats in 2006. Six other parties split the remaining 44 seats.

After the Christian Democrats initially ruled out any cooperation with the Freedom Party--which favors a ban on the Quran, a headscarf tax, and other anti-Islam measures--Mr. Rutte sought to team up with Labor, led by former Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen, and two smaller left-wing parties. But those talks collapsed after more than two weeks over wide disagreements on budget cuts. The austerity-minded Mr. Rutte had pledged during the campaign to balance the Dutch budget within four years.

The previous government, headed by the Christian Democrats and Labor collapsed in February after Labor resigned when Mr. Balkenende -- at the behest of President Obama and NATO -- sought to renege on his promise of withdrawing the country's 1,950-strong contingent from Afghanistan before September. The last troops are now slated to leave Sunday. 

A 5.6 mag. earthquake struck northeastern Iran..[ 1553 ]

Earthquake hits northeastern Iran, injuring more than 100

By the CNN Wire Staff

July 30, 2010 -- Updated 2205 GMT (0605 HKT)

Tehran, Iran (CNN) --  

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck northeastern Iran on Friday, injuring at least 110 people, according to state-run media.

The quake hit 715 kilometers (445 miles) east of Tehran and was centered 26.1 kilometers (16.2 miles) deep, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The city of Torbat-e Heydarieh, at the epicenter, was rocked for about 10 seconds, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Torbat-e Heydarieh Gov. Mojtaba Sadeqian said 110 people were injured and at least one person was in critical condition, according to the official Press TV.

"There were no immediate reports of any mortalities in the earthquake. However, it is widely believed that a large number of people are trapped under the rubble, and the casualties are expected to be high," he said.

Iran lies on a series of seismic fault lines and has experienced devastating earthquakes -- most notably in December 2003, when a 6.6-magnitude quake devastated the ancient city of Bam in southeast Iran, killing at least 30,000 people.

Last year, an earthquake struck Hormozgan province in southern Iran, injuring about 700 people in the port city of Bandar Abbas, state-run media reported.

In 2008, a strong earthquake measuring 6.1 in magnitude struck in Hormozgan, demolishing nearly 200 villages and killing at least six people.

Israel : air strikes in Gaza..[ 1552 ]

Israel retaliates with air strikes in Gaza

Israel has carried out air strikes on targets in Gaza after militants in the territory fired a rocket into the Jewish city of Ashkelon, the first such attack in more than a year.

By Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem
Published: 10:17PM BST 30 Jul 2010

Israeli soldiers walk past Palestinian protestors during a demonstration in Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah Photo: AFP

Late Friday aircraft shot at least four missiles at buildings used by Hamas security forces in Gaza City, wounding eight, medics said.

Warplanes also hit smuggling tunnels on the border with Egypt, without causing casualties, witnesses said.

Palestinians reported several explosions in Gaza City and Israeli aircraft could be heard flying over the territory.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The earlier rocket attack, seen by some observers as an attempt to undermine the possible resumption of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, marked a significant escalation in the attritional campaign Islamist groups based in Gaza have waged on Israeli civilians living nearby.

It came a day after Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo told Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, that they would not stand in his way if he decided to talk to Israel face-to-face.
Although not thought to have been behind the attack, Hamas – long a bitter rival of Mr Abbas's secular Fatah party – attacked the Arab ministers for their support, however ambiguous, for renewed negotiations.

"They do not want to show that they're shying away from their decisions, so they came up with a vague result, saying neither 'yes' nor 'no' to an immediate resumption of direct negotiations," Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas's political wing, said from his headquarters in Damascus.

According to Israeli police, a 122-mm Chinese-made Grad rocket struck a residential area of the city shortly after 8.30am, damaging a nearby apartment block and destroying several cars. There were no casualties. It was only the fourth such attack on Ashqelon since Israel's ended its controversial military offensive against Gaza in January last year.
Since then, Hamas has refrained from launching rockets, a daily occurrence before the Israeli incursion, known as Operation Cast Lead.

Smaller rivals, however, have not abided by the unofficial ceasefire, firing more than 100 rockets into Israel this year, killing one man. Although Israel has frequently retaliated, it has done so in a limited fashion.

But yesterday's attack is likely to draw a more significant response. The Grad is more sophisticated and has a much heavier payload than the crudely-fashioned Qassam rockets, made in Gaza, that are the stock-in-trade for most of the territory's armed groups. As such, it could easily have caused casualties.

"No doubt, this is the most serious event since Operation Cast Lead," Benny Vakin, the mayor of Ashqelon said. "Hundreds of people live here. It's just luck that no one was killed."
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said he was taking the attack "very seriously", while the foreign ministry warned of a significant response. The United Nations also condemned the attack.

Heat Wave Batters Russia..[ 1551 ]

From Fires to Fish, Heat Wave Batters Russia

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Without the benefit of air conditioning, many Russian have sought refuge from the heat wherever they can find it.

RYBKHOZ, Russia ( The ,New York Times ).July 30, 2010,
—
This is a country that knows how to handle the cold, swaggering about during the most brutal of winters. But the heat is another story. And there has never been heat like this.

James Hill for The New York Times

Workers moved trout into pools cooler than where they were being kept at the Biserovsky fish farm outside of Moscow.

Without the benefit of air conditioning, many Russian have sought refuge from the heat wherever they can find it.

Here is how extreme it has become: Oymyakon in Eastern Siberia is considered one of the coldest places on Earth, with winter temperatures dropping to as low as minus 90 degrees. On Thursday, the thermometer also read 90 degrees. Plus 90. In the evening.

Much of Russia has been reeling. Forest fires have erupted. Drought has ruined millions of acres of wheat. More than 2,000 people have died from drowning in rivers, reservoirs and elsewhere in July and June, often after seeking relief from the heat while intoxicated. In Moscow alone, the number of such deaths has tripled in comparison with last year, officials said.

All week long, temperatures have been soaring to records, and on Thursday, they reached a new high for Moscow, 100 degrees. July has been the hottest month since the city began taking such measurements under the czars, 130 years ago, officials said.

At the Biserovsky Fish Farm in this suburb of Moscow, Ivan Tyurkin trudged along a pier and surveyed the breeding ponds all around him. He did not need a thermometer to figure out that the water was treacherously tepid. Dead trout, drifting like buoys, were evidence enough.


Last month, they were flipping and flopping and leaping, and Mr. Tyurkin was readying for another bountiful harvest. Now, with the weather finding seemingly endless ways of wreaking havoc across the country, the farm was in crisis.
“This is all just very difficult to believe,” Mr. Tyurkin said.
“There has never been a summer like this,” he said. “Never. Not once.”

That is a widely held view in Russia. New York, Washington and many other cities in the United States have certainly suffered from their own heat waves. But most Russians do not have air-conditioners, reasoning that they are not worth the investment given the typical summers here.

As if the heat were not enough, Moscow has lately been coated with a patina of smoke from fires that have broken out in dried-up peat bogs in the suburbs. Throw open a window in a desperate bid to catch a breeze and the unpleasant smell of smoke bounds in. One of the country’s chief medical authorities estimated that walking around Moscow for a few hours was the equivalent of smoking a pack or two of cigarettes.

A little respite from the heat is expected on Friday, when the temperatures are predicted to drop to 88 degrees in Moscow, but next week they may jump to 100 again.
When the heat wave hit Russia, agriculture seemed the first to fall victim across much of the country, with officials predicting that grain production could decline by as much as 25 percent. Now, fish farms like Biserovsky are struggling to keep their stocks alive.

Here in the village of Rybkhoz, a name derived from the Russian words for “fish production,” the artificial ponds have been nurturing fish for local consumption since Nikita Khrushchev’s time.
Trout is a relatively new venture for the Biserovsky farm, underscoring Moscow’s prosperity. In Soviet times, trout — let alone fresh trout — was viewed as a delicacy, but these days, it is much more available. It often retails for $5 to $7 a pound.

Biserovsky also produces carp, which is heartier and able to endure warm water, so that harvest is not at risk — at least not yet.
The farm said it had been expecting to harvest 100 tons of trout this year. Some died. The rest were prematurely sold — often at deep discounts — before they could be killed by the rising temperatures. About 30 percent of the live fish were in such bad shape that they could be used only for fish meal and other low-grade products.

With the current harvest gone, Mr. Tyurkin, who oversees the trout ponds at Biserovsky, has been intent on rescuing next year’s stock. His workers have been crowding the juvenile fish into a single pond that they have tried to cool down, as if it were a refugee camp for survivors of a great meteorological cataclysm.
“We realize that this may not have a great chance of succeeding, but if we don’t do this, they won’t have any chance at all,” Mr. Tyurkin said.

He explained that trout thrive in water that is 55 to 62 degrees. In recent days, the water temperature has spiked to as high as 85 degrees near the surface. The trout swim deeper to seek cooler water, but the lower they go, the less oxygen is available. They either overheat or suffocate.
Yuri Baranov, Biserovsky’s marketing director, said the heat had even paralyzed the farm’s ability to receive shipments of live trout that are raised elsewhere and then trucked here to be fattened up to their sale weight, usually about two pounds.

“All around Russia, even in the north, they are having the same problems,” Mr. Baranov said.
For now, the Biserovsky workers are pumping air into the ponds for the remaining stock, as well as circulating cooler water sucked up from the depths.

Mr. Tyurkin, with his expansive belly and equally expansive manner of talking about fish, was clearly pained by it all.

“These are like my children,” he said. “We see them when they are little hatchlings, then we watch them grow. And normally, you see the result of our work. But now, just look at this. They start dying, they float, and that’s it.”

A version of this article appeared in print on July 30, 2010, on page A6 of the New York edition.

NASA image of the Day July 30.,..[ 1550 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Tweetup at HQ

NASA astronaut TJ Creamer talks about his experience in space during a "Tweetup" at NASA Headquarters, Thursday, July 29, 2010, in Washington. 

Creamer, who spent 161 days living aboard the International Space Station as part of the Expedition 22/23 crew, set up the orbiting outpost's live Internet connection and posted updates about the mission to his Twitter account, sending the first live tweet from orbit.  

Image Credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers

Παρασκευή, 30 Ιούλιος 2010 7:00:00 πμ