Daily World Buzz: 01/07/11

Friday, January 7, 2011

Ral Castro remodeling new government nothing more to start the year

New changes of government in Cuba very beginning of the year. This time, Raul Castro has dismissed the Minister of Construction, Fidel Figueroa, "for errors" in the performance of their functions, but without specifying which ones. The historic commander Ramiro Valdes, 78, comes also from the Ministry of Informatics and Communications, but maintains his position as vice president and will oversee strategic areas of the economy, basic industry and water resources, in addition to the sectors construction and information technology, so its position is reinforced.

An envelope caught fire bomb at a polling station in Washington

At least one envelope, maybe two, caught fire Friday, January 7 in a post office in the U.S. capital, Washington, causing no injuries, police said. The incident "was described as burning, no explosion at this stage", said a police officer in the city. He said that "one or two" envelopes and had caught fire around 14: 45 pm local time (20 h 45 to Paris) in a post office.

An employee of the postal sorting the mail placed in a vault where the block caught fire, reports the TV station WUSA, quoting officials of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The building was evacuated and a bomb squad was dispatched. The day before in nearby Maryland, two parcel bombs were ignited in public buildings, slightly injuring an employee of mail.

Washington, D.C. (geolocation) Washington, D.C. (homepage) Washington, D.C. (wikipedia)

Explosive package in Washington are like those of Maryland

WASHINGTON - Another explosive package, found in the District of Columbia in the state of U.S. capital, after the two found last Thursday in two public buildings in Maryland. The discovery of the latter envelope arson occurred in a government building for the sorting office. On the spot rushed to the police and emergency services.

According to preliminary information there are no injuries. The police reported that the package caught fire after being handled by an attendant, in a similar way to that place yesterday by the other two envelopes. The discovery of the building was evacuated.

Maryland (geolocation) Maryland (wikipedia) Washington (U.S. state) (geolocation) Washington (U.S. state) (wikipedia)

Dioxin: German manufacturer of pet food suspected of fraud

A German manufacturer of fat cattle for food is suspected of fraud vis-à-vis its customers as part of the dioxin scandal that stirred the country's farms. "Many things suggest that the company misled its customers and has transformed fatty acids of low quality feed to livestock expensive," said a spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture of the regional state of Lower Saxony in German newspaper Westfalen Blatt.

Computer graphics - "The World Magazine: Prophets of doom in Haiti

After the earthquake, cholera ... this country be forgotten by God? A year after the earthquake, "World Magazine" returned to Haiti, where voodoo accuse missionaries of provoking God's wrath.

Le Monde (homepage) Le Monde (wikipedia) Haiti (geolocation) Haiti (wikipedia)

Gaza: Four Israeli soldiers wounded by Palestinian gunfire

Four Israeli soldiers were wounded Friday, January 7 at night, by firing automatic weapons and mortar shells at Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Channel 10 TV said two soldiers hit were transferred to Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva (Southern Israel) aboard a helicopter, while two others were treated on the spot.

The station broadcast images of the evacuation. Two soldiers are in a state called "serious", while two others were slightly more affected. A spokesman for the army confirmed that four soldiers had been wounded but declined to give further details. The incident - in which soldiers have exchanged gunfire with Palestinians - occurred near the kibbutz (collectivist village) Beeri, located near the Gaza Strip, reports said.

Expense: imprisonment for a former Labour MP in the UK

A former Labour MP was sentenced Friday, Jan. 7, in London a year and a half in prison for false accounting. He becomes the first elected jailed after a resounding scandal of expense that had spattered the British elected in 2009. David Chaytor, 61, pleaded guilty to providing false invoices for a total of 22,650 pounds (27,000 euros) to have them reimburse its expense of parliament.

The sum of related services which had actually been provided free of rent and allegedly paid between 2005 and 2008 for two homes in London and the north-west England. These homes actually belonged to his mother and himself. Mr Chaytor is the first former elected to be sentenced for claiming reimbursement of expenses to which he was not entitled, as a result of revelations in the Daily Telegraph which began in 2009.

Clinton confidant is Obama's economic advisor

President Obama has taken the next important post in his new team: Gene Sperling will succeed Lawrence Summers economic advisers. He was already a trusted friend in the tenure of Bill Clinton. Washington - Barack Obama will appoint the 52-year-old sparrow post as director of the National Economic Council (NEC) is still officially on Friday.

The lawyer and economist, had held the post already in the nineties under President Bill Clinton. Sperling is a moderate Democrat, as applicable, replacing Lawrence Summers, the beginning of 2009 the important Konkunkturpaket drew up the first weeks of the Obama presidency. Summers had explained in last summer's withdrawal: he wanted to devote himself to the teaching again.

Terror in Afghanistan: Many dead in suicide attack

A suicide bomber has been done in a public bathhouse in southern Afghanistan a bloodbath. At least 17 people died in the crimes committed in the midday attack killed. The Taliban is on the deed. Kandahar - The perpetrator had the explosives strapped to his chest, he brought to the explosion: A suicide attack in a bath house in the town of Spin Boldak in southern Afghanistan, according to official figures, 17 people were killed and 23 others injured.

Algeria, fights for the high cost of living

High Anxiety in North Africa. In Algeria, during violent protests against the high cost of living and rampant unemployment, in an atmosphere of growing anger and frustration of the weakest sectors of the population. In the capital Algiers today has triggered a fierce battle between police and protesters.

The clashes come after those of recent days in Tunisia, also caused by the price of basic necessities. And after the attacks against the Coptic Christians in Egypt took place on December 31. In Algeria, the protest began on Tuesday with violent demonstrations. Cops in riot gear with tear gas and batons, are deployed in the most sensitive of the capital, especially near mosques.

The center-dutch government again agreed to send a mission Afganistn

The new center-right Dutch government, formed by liberals and Democrats and has no parliamentary majority, has decided to send a new mission to Afghanistan. Consisting of 545 police officers, were responsible for supporting their Afghan colleagues in the maintenance of law and order. The Dutch group this year and will remain between Kabul, Kunduz province, and the military base in Mazar-e-Sharif until 2014.

The EU against Lukashenko "No entry visa"

BRUSSELS - Denying the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko a visa to enter the European Union. It will be one of the consequences of the restrictions that Brussels is preparing to reintroduce to sanction the suppression of the opposition following the consultation in which the strong man of Minsk was re-elected with 80% of the vote.

A European diplomat said that during a meeting with the permanent representatives of the 27 "have decided to launch the" to reinstate the restrictions on visas for the Belarusian leader and several members of his regime. The EU in 2006 had already imposed similar sanctions against Lukashenko and some forty men of his circle.

Graduate unemployment, the engine of revolt Tunisia

In Tunisia, the term has long been taboo. In a country that had so much invested in education, speak of "graduate unemployment" sounded like an admission of failure. But the reality is coming up for the authorities: the suicide of a young street vendor has triggered a revolt and unpublished since mid-December, the Tunisians are in the street.

Foremost among them young people, driven to desperation by unemployment and social injustice. Mohamed Bouazizi, bachelor of 26 years, had set himself on fire after the authorities had confiscated the fruits and vegetables that he sold to survive. The 5% average annual growth of the Tunisian economy in recent years hides a very tough economic situation for the country's youth: according to an official study conducted by the Tunisian Ministry of Labour in collaboration with the World Bank, if the rate overall unemployment stood at 14% in 2008, one of those 18 to 29 was nearly three times that of adults.

Protests continued in Algeria after a quiet morning

Clashes between protesters and security forces have resumed in Algiers Friday, January 7, while violent incidents erupted in Annaba in eastern Algeria. In Algiers, in the popular district of Belouizdad, groups of youths clashed with stones and glass bottles of police deployed en masse and heavily armed.

The police responded to protesters by using water cannons and tear gas. In Annaba, untouched so far by the youth protest movement against their insecurity and soaring prices, which now affects a dozen departments, violent clashes erupted after Friday prayers in the neighborhood of the Gasometer .

The Indian Bastille Binayak Sen

A mischievous smile a little decorating a long salt-and pepper beard. And slender fingers that grip the wire fence of a police van. Dr. Sen is all there. Serenity behind bars. Moral force eyeing nuts. This photo is now famous in India. She was taken to Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh state, during one of many shuttles Binayak Sen from prison and court.

Striking, this cliché has now promised a fortune larger. On 24 December 2010, Sen was sentenced to life in prison for "sedition" by a court in Raipur. Indian court judge convicted the doctor of the poor, who spent thirty years of his life to caring for the tribal communities of central India, in collusion with the guerrillas Naxalite (Maoist).

Unemployment fell in the U.S., despite low job creation

The U.S. economy has created many jobs well below expectations in December, but the unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level in over a year and a half, to 9.4%, official statistics show, published Friday, January 7. Analysts had forecast a decline much less steeply, by 0.1 percentage points, according to their median forecast.

This rate of 9.4% is the lowest in the U.S. since May 2009. The fall in unemployment has occurred despite job creation apparently insufficient. The ministry said the U.S. economy created 103,000 jobs more than it has destroyed this month. This reflects a net increase hiring by 45% compared to November, but analysts were expecting a figure of 150,000, the threshold at which it can generally begin to expect a decline in unemployment.

The Audacity of Hope

My friend Gianluca Cecere, an excellent photographer, gave me a photograph of Naples such a beauty that I see it moved. In a release, that freezes a moment, behind which, however, there are the expectations of a life spent watching and waiting for the right light, Gianluca knew, knowing me well, portraying the city 'that I grew up, my house and the refuge of my heart.

In the photo, lights and shadows and flights of birds that might escape the casual eye, I have found intact the certainty that when I arrived in New York, have arrived starting from the beauty. A beauty "secret", however, often difficult to see behind the heaps of rubbish or the sadness of alleys that seem painful, regardless of time, be equal in their exhausting immutability.

584 British forcibly impregnated

London Correspondent - Sarah - thirty this Londoner has requested anonymity - has two small boys when it decided in July 2006, to use a contraceptive implant, Implanon. Seven months later, Sarah, who had been told that this treatment also put an end to the rules discovered with amazement that she is pregnant for several weeks.

In agreement with her husband, Sarah chooses to abort, but the young woman became "paranoid" and an extreme distrust with respect to all contraceptive methods. Torque not resist. Wednesday, January 5, the UK regulator - the Medicines and Healthcare ProductRegulatory Agency (MHRA) - revealed that Sarah's case is not unique.

Riots and protests to stop the increases in the football league

ALGIERS - Algeria will not stop in the protest which began Tuesday in the wake of the recent price increases of food consumption is high. New demonstrations broke out last night in almost any country, in different districts of Algiers clashes occurred between police and protesters, who have burned cars and looted shops.

Originally, the soaring prices of basic food essentials: oil and sugar have risen last week by more than 20%. It spreads the fear of the possible lack of bread. The Algerian follow those events in Tunisia, where the effects of the economic crisis have pushed students to take to the streets.

In Pakistan, the ruling coalition's majority in Parliament found

One of the main allies of the Government of Pakistan, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), announced Friday, January 7 return within the ruling coalition, who returns as the majority in Parliament and is more likely to be reversed by the opposition. "The MQM said that he will sit with the government in the interests of the country and democracy," said an officer, Raza Haroon, at a press conference with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

TV report: suicide bombers trained in Iraq in Stockholm

Berlin - In the case of the suicide bomber had detonated in mid-December in the middle of Stockholm's inner city his explosive device, there is a new track. As the Arabic TV station al-Arabiya on his web page says, it leads in Iraq: Major General Diya Kinani, head of the Iraqi counter-terrorism, have the station said that Taimour Abdulwahab for a period of three months as part of an explosives factory in the Iraqi city of Mosul went through before he struck in Sweden.

The former "barons" of cocoa, detained since 2008 on bail

The former leaders of the cocoa sector of Côte d'Ivoire, the leading world producer, accused of massive embezzlement and jailed since mid-2008, obtained Friday, January 7 bail. At a hearing Friday morning, the criminal court in Abidjan has ordered the provisional release of twenty-two inmates, a move welcomed by those concerned and their relatives by acclamation.

The sensible "trial cocoa" was repeatedly postponed late 2010, amid presidential campaign, election and post election crisis. Opened in October 2007, at the request of President Laurent Gbagbo, had an extensive criminal investigation led to the arrest in June 2008 almost all of those responsible for juicy industry, including relatives of Mr Gbagbo.

A former close Clinton approached the economic council of the White House

President Barack Obama will appoint Friday, January 7 at the head Gene Sperling, National Economic Council (NEC), a position he had previously served in the Clinton administration, said a senior U.S. official. Mr. Sperling, 52, would succeed Lawrence Summers, who announced at the end of the summer his desire to return to university after working in the massive plan to revive the economy adopted during the first weeks of Obama's presidency in early 2009.

Obama uses a Clinton adviser to strengt the solution to the crisis

President Barack Obama will appoint a new director Gene Sperling and the National Economic Council (NEC, for its acronym in English) and Chief Economist American leader. Sperling is not new in this position, he held between late 1996 and 2000 during Bill Clinton's second term. In addition, reports quoting sources from the White House, Obama will also promote Jason Furman as number two of this body.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood are concerned about the risk of tearing intercommunity

Cairo, special correspondent - Member Referral Office of the Muslim Brotherhood, former MP Saad Al-Hoseiny multiply citations of verses from the Koran to illustrate his point: Christians and Muslims can live in harmony in Egypt. The attack against a Coptic church in Alexandria the night of the New Year's Eve is a "crime, rejected by religion and reason." Having strongly condemned the attack as early as 1 January, the first opposition force in Egypt, banned as a political party but relatively tolerated, has been rather muted.

Suicide bombing in southern Afghanistan

A suicide bomber blew himself up, Friday, Jan. 7, in a public bath in the town of Spin Boldak in southern Afghanistan, bordering Pakistan, killing 17 people including the police officer that it was, and at least 21 injured, local authorities said. The officer would be targeted and killed the head of the unit's rapid reaction brigade of the local border police.

The attack was claimed by the Taliban. The conflict in Afghanistan has killed 1 292 police officers in 2010, according to the Ministry of Interior. Suicide bombings are, with roadside bombs, the favorite weapon of insurgents fighting the government and its allied international forces since the latter drove the Taliban from power in late 2001.

A suicide bombing at a house caused 17 deaths in baths Afganistn

At least 17 people have died and 21 others wounded following a suicide bombing attack in a bath house in the Afghan province of Kandahar, south of the country, whose target was a police commander who was among the deceased, according to provincial authorities. Zalmai Ayoubi, spokesman for the Kandahar governor, said that the commander was bathing when the explosion occurred in the bath house, located in the town of Spin Boldak, near the border with Pakistan, and that other victims are civilians .

Terror fears: London police back to results obtained from vacation

London - Britain fears a major attack on hubs. However, the British police on Friday denied reports that the terror alert level had been increased to British airports and other major transport routes. BBC had reported on the night of Friday, the possible risk has been raised from "substantial" to "high".

give information about an imminent terrorist attack it. If it were a precautionary measure only for the transport sector. The Daily Telegraph also reports of growing fear of an attack. Officials of the British Transport Police had been called back from vacation and out of their days. Furthermore, additional people had been requested after the British intelligence services had warned of a possible terror plot.

Sarkozy: "There is a cleanup plan for the Christians of the Orient"

PARIS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the existence of a real "plan of particularly vicious purge of Christians from the Arab countries of the East". Sarkozy then said: "We do not resign, ensure religious freedom." The French President has referred explicitly to the attacks against Christian communities.

Sarkozy spoke today at the ceremony for the new year greetings to the religious authorities of the country, which joined this year was exceptionally representative of the Copts in France, the father Girguis Lucas, of the parish of banlieue of Chatenay-Malabry.

Oriente Province (wikipedia)

Côte d'Ivoire, new playground of the French extreme right?

The crisis in Côte d'Ivoire also played in France where the Ivorian community is important and where supporters of both camps are raising tensions.

Côte d'Ivoire (geolocation) Côte d'Ivoire (wikipedia)

Bomb in Afghanistan 17 dead, twenty wounded

KANDAHAR - Seventeen people died and 21 were wounded in a suicide attack that hit the public baths of Spin Boldak, a town in southern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan. This was announced by the local police. Among the dead there are also two police officers. The suicide bombings are frequent in Afghanistan, but they are rare in major public places.

They take usually target the government or the Afghan and international forces.

Afghanistan (geolocation) Afghanistan (wikipedia)

A school against the fear that Haiti back to life

NEW YORK - What do have hope? Christie's eyes chase the words of the "Chants d'Esperance" highlighted on the page: "Dans le Cieux et sur la terre / The aucun nom n'est plus doux." In heaven and on earth there is no sweeter name: just believe it. "At 9: French lesson" yet announced the program written with chalk on the blackboard that no rescuer now remove more than dreams.

UNICEF volunteers say that is the thing of the past that does not pass. He resisted all the blackboard. He resisted the more violent earthquake with which the affectionate name that God has plagued Haiti: 230 000 deaths and more than half a million displaced. He survived the cholera that has run down on even a hurricane: three thousand dead, "3841-29 December 2010" lets you know what's left of the Ministry of Health.

Baptists will remain in prison until February Locked immediate release

Cesare Battisti remains in prison and his future will be discussed in February, after the reopening of the Brazilian courts. This is what decided the President of the Supreme Federal Tribunal, Cezar Peluso, thus blocking "the release immediao" requested by the lawyers of the former terrorist red, which they described as "a kind of coup" that measure.

In the wake of no extradition announced Dec. 31 by former President Lula in Brasilia last few hours has come from another relevant news about the case: a Brazilian Parliament has asked the High Court to "stop and reverse" the decision with an initiative (a 'Ação popular') accepted by Peluso.

Egypt: Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas tense

The Copts in Egypt have not let themselves be swayed: Despite threats, they celebrated their Christmas fairs around the country - under massive police protection. Many Muslims took part in solidarity in the services. Preparations for the Christmas Fair ran straight at full speed when a message arrived, all had feared.

It was said, was late Thursday afternoon in a church again, a bomb was found, this time in Minya, Upper Egypt. The cleaning woman had found a suspicious box in the same sweeping and informed the police. Only hours later it was clear that in the can though as nails in the bomb were in Alexandria, but instead only correct explosives fireworks hit.

"The military are not always informed the minister is reluctant"

It is at least "unusual" that the political authority of the military trying to shift the opacity of the news on Afghanistan: Mauro Del Vecchio, former commander of the ISAF mission and now a senator of the Democratic Party, the Italian soldiers deserve more respect. General, you have heard the allegations of the defense minister to soldiers, according to him guilty of not informing him properly.