Full overwhelms Brisbane 12 deaths and nearly 70 missing

ROME - The devastating flood that week is flooding the northeast of Australia, in an area as large as France and Germany combined, is now also covers the streets of Brisbane, Queensland's capital and third largest city with two million inhabitants . The center is desert and thousands of people today have been forced to evacuate from the suburbs are lower, while the flooding of the Brisbane River reached the four and a half meters meters.

Rigor: France encourages Portugal to continue its efforts

Portugal must absolutely continue efforts to reduce its debt and deficits, said Wednesday, Jan. 12, Christine Lagarde, French Minister of Economy. "Portugal is in the process of providing results that are better than the commitments that were made and I think that is likely to reassure investors," she said on France 2.

"It is imperative that it continues because structural reforms are needed," she added. "My hope is that they will honor their commitments and more, and that under these conditions investors will look sympathetically Portuguese debt," said the French minister. The governments of 17 countries of the eurozone plan to increase the amount of permanent emergency fund for countries of the area and reduce the rate allocated to Ireland, says the German newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday.

Kabul suicide bomber against a bus At least 4 dead, dozens injured

KABUL - It 's at least four dead and 30 wounded the provisional report of a suicide bombing carried out in central Kabul today against a bus carrying employees of the intelligence service (NDS) Afghans to their workplace. According to the report ToloNews Tv AlJazira Arab TV correspondent, however, the dead would be at least eight and 27, were injured.

The suicide bomber, it was learned, came into action at around 8 in the central district of Serah Alauddin, a short distance from Parliament and other government buildings, setting out her motorcycle packed with explosives against the heavy vehicle, which looked like a bus normal but actually carrying staff of the Nds.

Haiti: "The situation is worse, a year after the earthquake"

Jean-Michel Caroit, a journalist with Le Monde, arrived in Port-au-Prince January 13, 2010, in the aftermath of the earthquake. The slowness of reconstruction to the arrival of cholera, he recounts a year of chaos on the island.

• TV heroes inspired Haiti quake survivor (12/01/2011)
• Return to Haiti one year on (12/01/2011)
• Picture of Haiti Earthquake Causes Coming into Focus (11/01/2011)
• Spreading the gospel in Haiti (11/01/2011)
• Obama marks anniversary of Haiti earthquake (11/01/2011)

Haiti (geolocation)  Haiti (wikipedia)  

"In Haiti we can only pray"

At Wednesday's 16.53 (22.53, hora peninsular Spanish), Haiti will silence to remember the sound that a year ago he made the earth to open. After a minute in churches and police stations will sound the "dial tone to the dead and hundreds of white balloons are released into the sky. At that precise time, on January 12, 2010, an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale shook Puerto Principe, raising a huge cloud of dust and taking with them 230,000 lives, most of which have not yet counted.

Found in the Koran, Islam friendship

The massacres of Christians in a cathedral in Baghdad and Al-Qaddissin Coptic church in Alexandria are unequivocal signs that something serious is happening in Muslim lands: the slow and brutal exclusion of Christians, even the most refractory to proselytize The most inserted in the place they inhabit, not much different from the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries after the '48.

No matter, here, wondering why the shock driven it less of today's oppression of Christians. Maybe because the Christian martyrology comforting rituals of old. Perhaps only beginning to understand the catastrophe that was the end of the Habsburg Empire, nationalism, identity and persecution of minorities that it generated after the First World War.

California, a black man could be sentenced to death. But perhaps he is innocent

"California could kill an innocent person." I have written five federal judges, paying the ex-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's request to commute the death sentence of Kevin Cooper, on death row since 1991. Schwarzenegger should grant a pardon before the end of his term, January 3 last year. He did not, passing the grain carefully to his successor, Democrat Jerry Brown.

But the affair Cooper has become one of the thorniest political issues, the emblem of the many evils that afflict the American justice system. In particular, the system of capital punishment. The court case of Kevin Cooper begins with one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the state of California.