World News Post: Apr 20, 2011

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

INDIA - The population reaches 1.21 billion people

"With 1.21 billion, the population of India is roughly equivalent to the combined populations of the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan," says the newspaper the day after publication of preliminary figures on the census. "This means that India has added another Brazil in its population over the past decade, despite a slowdown in population growth." Some 2.5 million civil servants are employed in this census, launched in April 2010.

Habitants (wikipedia)

Killing three people and injured 33 others in demonstrations in Yemen

Sana'a. .- At least three people were killed and 33 others were injured in demonstrations against the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sana'a and Taiz in southern Yemen, medical sources told Efe. Two protesters were killed and 32 others were wounded by gunfire from armed groups Saleh supporters near the home of Vice President Abdo Rabo Mansour Hadi in Sana'a, medical sources stated hospital that monitors the political opposition against the University of the capital .

The Chinese premier calls for freedom of expression

The Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, called on Communist Party cadres new freedom of expression, moral and political reform in the midst of one of the worst crackdowns on dissent in the country Asia. "I will return to underline the importance of telling the truth ... We must create conditions for people to tell the truth.

As for government policy should be in line with the wishes of the people, we hear the views of the people" Wen said in a speech reprinted in the press today in China. "A country without improvements in the quality of its people and without moral strength can not be a strong and respected by others," said Wen in a speech to the new executive board released Tuesday by the official "People's Daily ' .

UNITED KINGDOM - A Gaddafi sent to London for secret talks

The daily has a scoop in its edition of April 1: "The regime of Colonel Qaddafi to London sent one of his closest emissaries for secret talks with British authorities." According to the newspaper, Mohammed Ismail, a close adviser to one of Gaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam, visited the British capital in recent days.

This meeting would be that "one of many between Libyan authorities and Western countries in the last fortnight."

Raul Castro was elected first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba

Havana, April 19 .- The President of Cuba, Raul Castro, was elected first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC only), the highest office of the organization which replaced his brother Fidel, who ceded power in 2006 by illness and he held the position since the party's founding in 1965. In the presence of Fidel, Raul Castro received the applause of the whole of the Sixth Congress of the CPC made public today after it closed the designation by the Central Committee of the organization.

Fidel Castro attends the closing ceremony of the Sixth Congress

After being elected as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), President Raul Castro said on Tuesday that assumes "your last job" with a commitment to defend socialism and "never to allow the return of the capitalist system" to their country . "I take my last job with the firm conviction and commitment to honor the first Secretary of Central Committee of Communist Party of Cuba's main mission and meaning of their lives to defend, preserve and continue perfecting socialism and never to allow the return of capitalist system, "said Raul Castro in his speech which was closed the VI Congress of the CCP.

DRUG '- Bolivia and Brazil are united in the fight against drugs

Bolivia and Brazil signed March 31 in La Paz a broad agreement on cooperation against drug trafficking, providing that the South American giant to provide assistance and equipment, including helicopters and drones in this Andean country, source of most of the cocaine flowing to Brazil. The two countries share a 3,100 kilometer border and, according to Brazilian authorities, 80-90% of cocaine in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are from Bolivia's third largest producer of cocaine in the world.

Brazil (lonelyplanet) Brazil (geolocation) Brazil (wikipedia)

Gadafistas continue to plague the Jebel Nafusa Misrata and has its dead

Algiers. .- Forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi today continue pounding rebel positions in the town of Misrata, besieged for two months, while in the region of Jebel Nafusa bombings have claimed the lives of at least 110 people in two days. If Misrata, the third largest city in Libya, is the burning question of the actuality of war in this North African country, all eyes have shifted suddenly, these last hours to the southwest of the country as a result of renewed fighting occur there.

30 deaths in the last two days in Syria

At least 30 people have died in the last two days and another 90 were injured during riots in the Syrian city of Homs, which have worsened this morning, according to the group opposing the Revolution against Syria Bashar Asad. This group, one of the most active during the revolt, has denounced this Tuesday at his Facebook page in the death of a 26 year old this morning, reportedly the latest victim of the riots that erupted in this town in central Mexico last Saturday and Monday in which 20 people died.

IRELAND - Twenty-four billion more to banks

"The government has accepted the re-capitalization of 24 billion euros of the major Irish banks," reports the newspaper of reference of the island to its front. "It will be the fifth plan to rescue banks since 2008, the newspaper said, bringing to 70 billion euros the total aid from the state." The bailout announcement was made by the Central Bank of Ireland March 31, following resistance testing performed on four major Irish banks.

Syria takes steps to repeal the emergency law pushed by the riots

Damascus. .- The Syrian government today passed legislation to repeal the Emergency Law, in force since 1963, coinciding with the escalation of violence in the city of Homs, where there have been thirty dead in recent hours. "The Council of Ministers approved a draft legislative decree stipulating to the state of emergency in the country," Syrian state television announced.

In addition, the Government also announced that it had given the green light to a bill that "regulates the right of citizens to assemble peacefully, to authorize measures, and mechanisms to protect the protesters," according to the television. On Saturday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, had insisted on their commitment to eliminate that rule, but did not set a specific date.

France completely at odds with more troops in Libya

French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe, was "totally opposed" to sending troops on the ground in Libya and supported to continue the bombings to destabilize the regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi. In a meeting with diplomatic reporters, the minister said that pressure on the Libyan leader is destined to have dropouts, even in Tripoli, so favored in this way.

Juppe also approved sending special forces to guide bombs, as requested by the president on the eve of the parliamentary committee on Foreign Affairs, Axel Poniatowsky. For the chief diplomat, are the rebels to do the job of setting targets that have to turn the shooting of NATO forces.

Kaouther ADIM - Algiers, boredom

A family. Composed of four members. The mother, his son Adel, Yasmine and her two daughters Sarah, whose brother Hamza the Madman, and granddaughter, Mouna. A widow and three children fatherless. The latter? Broke prematurely by a "blind bullet". This family, which plays the role of protagonist in The ballerinas Papicha *, the first novel Kaouther Adim, lives in a building in the heart of Algiers.

He died in an assault command chief killed in Gaza Italian activist

Gaza. .- Forces Palestinian government of Hamas in Gaza today stormed the refuge of the alleged murderers of the Italian Vittorio Arrigoni, an operation that ended with the death of Islamist chief of staff, the Jordanian Abdelrahman Brizak. "Brizak threw a grenade at his comrades and himself," the Interior Ministry after starting the assault on the house in the area of Nusseirat in which the alleged murderers had fled activist.

Gaza City (lonelyplanet) Gaza (geolocation) Gaza (wikipedia)

My absence in Congress

Fidel finally said goodbye to its leadership position in the Cuban Communist Party. That it a goodbye that has previously passed through to vote as a delegate to the economic initiatives presented at the Sixth Party Congress. Is it a small mouth goodbye? Confirms that leaving his post as chairman of the PCC, as announced in 2006, although their positions, votes and will present reflections.

"Around noon Raul and his assistant sent me a ballot, and could thus exercise my right to vote as a delegate to Congress, to honor members of the Party in Santiago de Cuba gave me without my knowing a word. I did not mechanically. I read the biographies of the proposed new members voted and even asked (...) pictures of time exercised that right, "says Castro on how to exercise his vote in Congress.

Italy parked his plans to return to nuclear energy

Rome. .- The Italian Government has decided to stop its plans to re-use of nuclear energy, after the March 23 approved a moratorium of one year before the crisis in Japan caused by the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami. According to reports today the Italian media, quoting parliamentary sources, the executive Silvio Berlusconi has decided to introduce an amendment to a decree law currently under debate in the Senate and contained the moratorium.

Continued progress on the far right

Continued progress of the wave far-right in Europe. After the victory of ultra-nationalist parties in Italy, Hungary, Holland, Belgium, Sweden and France, Finland has been the latest country to fall before the rise of populist forces: this past weekend, the party of the True Finns has made with 19% of the vote, becoming the third power politics.

Taking advantage of a racist and xenophobic political discourse in times of economic crisis, most parties have fostered hostility towards immigrants and other minorities to get votes. Although in some countries the entry of the far right in national politics has been occurring for several years, much of the continent in 2010 and the first months of 2011 have been key.

YEMEN - Ali Saleh can pack his bags

After the fall of the Presidents of Egypt and Tunisia, Mubarak and Ben Ali, is the turn of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, to be ousted by a popular revolt? His regime was an indispensable ally of the West in the fight against terrorism in general and against al-Qaida in particular. If the country is tipping into civil war, as predicted by President Saleh, the concern will be keen to Washington as in other Western capitals.

Sarkozy urges "tighten their belts" to not end as Greece and Portugal

Paris. .- The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has defended the Executive adjustment measures and urged the French to invest and work harder to prevent the country get to be in the position of Greece or Portugal. In a speech from the department of Ardennes, a region working in the northeast from which coined the slogan "work more to earn more" during the election campaign of 2007, the Head of State insisted on the slogan "if you want to keep France as a fifth world power.

125 dead in Jebel Nafusa and Misrata (Libya)

The conflict in Libya has left around 10,000 dead and 55,000 injured, according to Rome on Tuesday said the Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, quoting the head of the Libyan National Transitional Council (CNT), Mustafa Abdeljalil, whom he met Tuesday in Rome. In an appearance before the media after the meeting, Frattini called on the CNT to the Contact Group meeting on Libya to be held in the same area of Italy on 2 May and in addressing issues such as aid for the defense the Libyan people and the sale of oil extracted in the area of the country under rebel control.

INDIA - A distrust of increasingly strong in the population

It could not have come at a worse. While several representatives of U.S. company General Electric met March 14 in New Delhi to find out how they would secure a share of the Indian nuclear market, several thousand miles away explosions resounded in central Fukushima Japan. Is cause for concern in many countries that previously boasted enthusiastically and without reserve the virtues of the atom.

Hits NATO command centers Gaddafi regime

Brussels .- The NATO air strikes last night reached several command centers of the regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya at different points, the Alliance said today in a statement. NATO made an unspecified number of "multiple attacks" against command and control facilities of the Gaddafi regime, including "communications infrastructure used to coordinate attacks against civilians," said the note.

20 dead in helicopter crash in India

At least 17personas were killed and several injured Tuesday in an accident involving a civilian helicopter with 23 people on board who was preparing to land in the Indian town of Tawang (northeast), official sources told Efe and the airline. The helicopter caught fire shortly before landing at the heliport of Tawang and landed on a nearby hill, told Efe an airline official Pawan Hans, which owned the wrecked unit.

JAPAN - Fukushima Daiichi, the tree that hides the forest

Immediately after the accident, when I learned that the heart of the reactor could begin to melt at any time, I immediately thought of hydrogen explosions would necessarily occur. But nobody has been able to report. It's amazing to see that the specialists were unable to anticipate this, probably for lack of knowledge of the reactor.

"With these words that Takashi Hirose discusses how authorities reacted to the disaster Fukushima Daiichi. Since the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, survey of nuclear power plants, expressing publicly the problems and hazards of the system. This accident occurred in the United States, radioactive substances were released after the merger of the heart of the reactor, in a radius of 80 kilometers, irradiating the inhabitants.

Universities in Beijing will love lessons to students

Beijing .- The education authorities in Beijing are preparing a course to teach at universities in China's capital will include lessons on how to love and maintain romantic relationships, a fact that has caused astonishment among the students, local media reported Wednesday. According to the South China Morning Post, the Municipal Education Committee of Beijing has produced a text on "mental health" for Chinese university, which includes a chapter relationships.

Botswana takes to the streets for economic improvements

The public employee unions in Botswana have called a general strike 10 days demanding an increase in salaries frozen for three years, 16%. More than 90,000 workers who have managed to collapse all public services including schools and medical centers. "We will bring the strikes to end, until our demands are met," said the spokesman for the Public Sector Union, Goreteste Kekgonegile.

"The protests could lead the country into economic collapse," said the president, Ian Khama. Botswana went into a deep recession for three years due to international crisis. "It has hurt the drop in demand for diamonds," clarified in the Government, which makes constant calls for calm and asked the protesters to reconsider.

Thirty dead and ninety wounded in last two days in riots in Syria

Cairo .- At least thirty people have died in the last two days and other ninety wounded during riots in the Syrian city of Homs, which have worsened this morning, according to the group opposing the revolution against Bashar al-Assad Syria . This group, one of the most active during the riot, reported today on its Web Facebook death of a 26 year old this morning, reportedly the latest victim of the riots that erupted in this town in central Mexico on Saturday.

NATO planes bombed Tripoli and Sirte

Combat aircraft of NATO on Tuesday bombed the Libyan capital, Tripoli, Sirte, the hometown of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, said the official Libyan television TV. The network, citing military sources, said the attacks of NATO aircraft were produced early in the morning, but did not specify the objectives achieved.

The source did not indicate whether caused no casualties or damage, and simply refer to these attacks by colonial aggression by Crusaders. " The same string of other bombings reported yesterday on Tripoli and the nearby El M'hira, about 50 miles southwest of the Libyan capital, as well as in Sirte.

MEXICO - The injustice in all its splendor

Armed with statistics obtained by peeling for years the archives of the Mexican courts, lawyers and Roberto Hernández Negrete Layd told in the documentary presunto culpable if the young Toño disaster. Sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for murder with a firearm, he was convicted solely on the statements of the victim's cousin (and the only witness to the crime).

The two lawyers had no plans to tell the story of Toño. They were about to complete their doctorate at Berkeley when they were contacted by Toño's fiancee. The young woman had heard of them by a documentary (El túnel) [in 2006] in which they had demonstrated the arbitrary aspects of the Mexican penal system; desperate, she told them about her fiancé in jail and has Reclusorio Oriente sought to reopen his case.

Two wounded in a bomb explosion in southern Turkey

Ankara. .- Two men were injured today when a bomb exploded near a police station in the Turkish province of Mersin in the south of the country, state news agency Anadolu. According to the source, the Turkish police suspect that the two injured were manipulating the device. One of them, aged 22, lost his right hand and is admitted to the University Hospital of Mersin, along with another youth, aged 20, who was also seriously injured, although none of them life threatening, according to Anadolu.

Five killed in several attacks in Iraq

At least five people including a senior Iraqi Ministry of Education and three women, were killed Tuesday in separate attacks by armed groups in Iraq, police said. The sources told Efe that an explosive device blew up the car he was driving a director of the Iraqi Ministry of Education Abdel Amir Hussein, for the Al Dura, south of Baghdad.

The explosion caused the immediate death of Hussein and wounding two others who went by the place at the time of the blast. In another incident, gunmen stormed a house in southern Kirkuk, 250 kilometers north of Baghdad, killing two sisters and a relative who was visiting, said the sources, who did not specify the motive for the murder.

UNITED KINGDOM - Beat the pavement rather than go ...

On Saturday, March 26, there were two demonstrations in London. The first was attended by half a million people against budget cuts affecting disproportionately vital public services and those who provide them. The other showed how easy it is for hundreds of people to confiscate the event with sporadic violence.

It was the biggest demonstration the country has seen since those against the war in Iraq, eight years ago. They came from all over the kingdom to express their anger in budget savings, their only weapons consisting chanting slogans and waving placards. They were 500 000 and, with their desperate causes, they accounted for 500 000 different reasons for taking a stand.

Libya's civil war has killed 10,000 people in one month

Rome .- Some 10,000 people have been killed and between 50,000 and 55,000 were injured in the Libyan conflict, said the Foreign Minister of Italy, Franco Frattini. Frattini said that the data were provided by the President of the Libyan National Transitional Council (CNT), Mustafa Abdelyalil, whom he met in Rome today.

The Italian foreign minister invited the CNT to the meeting of the Contact Group on Libya to be held in Rome on May 2 and which will address issues such as aid to the defense of the Libyan people and the sale of oil extracted in areas of the country under rebel control. "We are working to identify international legal instruments that allow the sale of petroleum products produced in Cyrenaica (Libya's northeast region) to producers, suppliers and buyers," Frattini told the media after the meeting with Abdelyalil.

Belgium, in the Guinness World Records

Belgium has officially entered the Guinness Book of Records as the country takes more days without forming a government after elections, as previously occupying Iraq, said Tuesday the agency Belga. The record was beaten on 30 March, when Belgium reached 290 days without forming a government and became the country that has seen the longest period without an executive in times of peace.

Spent 289 days in Iraq until it launched the new administration after the 2003 conflict and before the country was Holland who held the record with the 207 days that the country quickly form a government in 1977, recalls the text of Guinness. The database of Guinness World Records contains over 40,000 records, while the book Hachette publishes each year, and will be published next October, contains only about 4,000, so that the presence on it of the Belgian record not guaranteed

Guinness (homepage) Guinness (wikipedia) Guinness 250 Advert - To Arthur (youtube)