News, Prophecy and other

[Shammu]

Russia’s UN Envoy Rejects Anglo-French Iran Proposals on Iran at UN

Created: 18.03.2006 13:14 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:14 MSK, 9 hours 44 minutes ago

MosNews

Russia’s UN ambassador rejected proposals Friday for the UN Security Council to demand a quick progress report on Iran’s nuclear program, saying — only half in jest — fast action could lead to the bombing of Iran by June, The Associated Press reported.

Andrei Denisov spoke just before a Security Council meeting where diplomats considered a revised list of British, French and U.S. proposals for a statement on Iran. The latest drafts retain many elements Russia and China have opposed.

A key sticking point for Russia is a proposal asking Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to deliver a report in two weeks on Iran’s progress toward clearing up suspicions about its nuclear program. Russia and China said two weeks is far too soon. “Let’s just imagine that we adopt it and today we issued that statement — then what happens after two weeks?” Denisov asked. “In such a pace we’ll start bombing in June.”

Denisov chuckled after he made the remark but it reflected Russia’s fears the UN has not yet decided how to respond if Iran continues to resist demands it make explicitly clear it is not seeking nuclear arms.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton betrayed increasing frustration with Russia, which along with China wants the council to take only mild action. Bolton warned as he spoke, Iran’s centrifuges were enriching uranium — a crucial step toward producing weapons-grade fissile material.

“If I were as near to Iran as Russia is, I’d certainly want to get this resolved quickly,” Bolton said. “I think in the Russian nuclear establishment, I think they know exactly what Iran is doing.”

The ambassadors of Britain, France and the United States said they are flexible on the 14-day deadline and diplomats suggested the council could ultimately ask for a report in 30-45 days as a concession to Russia and China.

“We have signalled that there’s flexibility on the assumption that we adopt this text soon, but the longer it takes, then the shorter the time will be,” Britain’s UN Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry said.

The council plans to meet again Tuesday.

In the meantime, senior officials from six key countries involved in negotiations concerning Iran’s nuclear program plan to meet Monday to discuss both initial council action and the larger strategy toward Iran. The officials from Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany are expected to talk about both the proposals circulated Friday and overall strategy.

The Security Council is split on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program between Britain, France and the United States, which want a statement spelling out a number of detailed demands, and Russia and China, who believe such action would send the wrong message to Iran.

Russia and China have said in the past tough council action could spark an Iranian withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. They also fear council action could eventually lead to tougher measures, such as sanctions.

Backed by the United States, Britain and France have proposed a statement that would spell out demands that have already been made by the IAEA. They include a demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment and take steps toward greater transparency and more co-operation.

Uranium enrichment can be used either in electricity generation or to make nuclear weapons. Iran insists its program is to produce nuclear energy — not weapons, as the United States believes.

Denisov said even though the IAEA demands are not new, Russia nonetheless wants the council simply to refer to IAEA documents where they were first expressed.

The primary concern of Russia and China throughout has been the IAEA — and not the Security Council — play the main role in handling Iran.

“I think the basic message — if we do have a message — is to be a short, brief, clear-cut message to support the IAEA,” China’s UN Ambassador Wang Guangya said after Friday’s meeting.

Russia’s UN Envoy Rejects Anglo-French Iran Proposals on Iran at UN

[Shammu]

Russia Confirms Controversial Nuclear Fuel Deal with India

Created: 17.03.2006 16:43 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:43 MSK

MosNews

Russia has met India’s request to supply it with nuclear fuel for the Tarapur nuclear power plant despite objections from the United States. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who is currently visiting New Delhi, said that the supply deal was in line with the two countries’ interests and did not violate international regulations.

“We have informed the group of nuclear suppliers of the Russian fuel deliveries to Tarapur,” he said, quoted by the Interfax agency.

“The Indian government would like to thank Russia for the positive response to the request for fuel supply for two power units of the Tarapur nuclear power plant,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said.

As MosNews reported, the U.S. State Department has said it is opposed to Russia supplying uranium to India till New Delhi fulfils its obligation to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities.

“We think that deals to supply that fuel should move forward on the basis of a joint initiative, on the basis of steps that India will take that it has not yet taken,” deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told a briefing late on Tuesday, March 14.

Russia sees the present delivery of 60 tons of fuel assemblies for the first and second reactors of the US-built plant in Tarapur as an exceptional case.

Russia Confirms Controversial Nuclear Fuel Deal with India

[Shammu]

Satellites Will See More, Faster
02:00 AM Mar, 17, 2006 EST

Critics of overhead imagery services like Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth generally fall into two categories: government agencies who say the services show too much, and users who lament they can't see more.

As the next generation of commercial imaging satellites moves closer to launch, the first camp may be out of luck.

Forthcoming features such as enhanced zoom capabilities, higher-resolution views and faster updates of stock imagery will reveal far more detail of Earth's surface than anything visible on a computer screen today. While satellite imagery won't be real-time, or capable of distinguishing individuals, it will be good enough to pinpoint ground-level details too blurry to identify using today's technology.

"We're just starting," said Matthew M. O'Connell, CEO of GeoEye (formerly Orbimage), which plans to launch a satellite in early 2007 that can show images of objects as small as 1.3 feet across. "At that resolution, we can literally count the manhole covers in Manhattan."

Just a few years ago, the idea of zooming in from a PC screen to any point on Earth would have seemed like the stuff of fantasy. Now that it's reality, satellite and aerial mapping applications are drawing millions of addicted users. Hardly a week goes by without news of some strange or scandalous finding: Last week amateur astronomer Emilio González of Spain used Google Earth to find what might be a previously unknown impact crater in Chad.

Mapping programs rely on an amalgam of footage collected from satellites and airplanes, with the most detailed imagery -- taken by aircraft -- reserved for densely populated places.

However, much of that imagery is rather stale, with some footage dating back several years. That, too, is about to change. Collecting up-to-date imagery will become an easier task in the next two years, as satellites cover significantly wider swaths of territory on a daily basis.

GeoEye says its next-generation satellite, GeoEye-1, will be capable of acquiring each day approximately 270,000 square miles of imagery, an area about the size of Texas. That's about seven times the area covered by Ikonos, the best imaging satellite the company has running today.

DigitalGlobe, the satellite imagery supplier for Google Earth, plans to launch its next orbital, WorldView 1, later this year. The company says it will be capable of collecting up to 193,000 square miles of imagery per day.

Next-generation satellites will also revisit locations more frequently.

Chuck Herring, spokesman for DigitalGlobe, anticipates that by combining WorldView and existing satellites, the firm will be able to revisit practically any point on Earth's surface on a daily basis. (Currently, the company revisits about once every three days.)

Giving the planet a boost in refresh rate is an ambitious agenda -- keeping up with urban sprawl has proven a losing proposition in the past.

In fast-growing regions like Phoenix, imagery even a few months old can look out-of-date. "Even Shanghai doesn't have highly accurate maps," said GeoEye's O'Connell. "And in northern Virginia (where the company is based), it's growing so rapidly that maps have to be updated constantly."

Stephen Lawler, general manager of Microsoft's Virtual Earth, plans to feed future iterations of the service more frequent flyover images of construction hot spots. But whatever he does, it'll be hard to beat the dazzled expectations of novice users, who commonly believe they're seeing a Stephensonian rendition of present-day reality.



"We get a lot of questions: Is that a real-time picture? Is that car really in my driveway right now?" said Lawler. "People are trying to understand."

While public mapping sites are major consumers of satellite images, most demand still comes from governments and private industries for internal use.

Federal and local governments use imagery for everything from urban planning to drug enforcement. Although resolution is too low to make out individual plants, satellites can register reflected and emitted electromagnetic energy that can be matched (.pdf) with known drug crops.

In a similar vein, farmers use satellite imagery to track their crops. Environmental watchdogs use it to track oil spills, illegal dumping and other natural, man-made or pending disasters.

DigitalGlobe's Herring says more uses of imagery will be discovered in years to come.

He's optimistic about the prospects in light of the "Google Earth effect": The more people view geo-spatial imagery, the more they incorporate it into how they visualize their surroundings.

"People are thinking in a geo-spatial way," he said. "They're not just thinking about where something is on the ground. When you look at a satellite image, you think of that area in a much different way."

Microsoft's Lawler envisions deeper integration occurring between online search and geo-spatial imaging. If the two mediums could be combined effectively, it could rectify what he sees as the key shortcoming of text-based search: the impossibility of finding something without the proper words to describe it.

Lawler used the example of recommending a restaurant to illustrate how imaging and search could work in tandem. In the hypothetical scenario, Lawler advised an out-of-town visitor to try a Thai restaurant near her hotel. But he could not remember the name or address, only that it had a blue awning.

Using current search technology, locating the restaurant would be a cumbersome task. With an imaging application, however, the visitor could click around on an aerial view of the area around her hotel and physically locate the restaurant.

"If I can recreate the real world with a digital representation," Lawler said, "you can take out that fuzzy logic and find an answer."

Mixing up search, imagery and mapping isn't a new concept. Amazon.com's A9 yellow pages contains snapshots and maps for businesses, searchable by name or location. Google's local search feature also lets users look for locations and see results in a 3-D aerial view.

Higher-resolution satellite data will make better applications possible, said Sam Bacharach, director of outreach for the Open Geospatial Consortium. One he'd like to see is walking directions, which would require more detailed data than driving instructions.

But there are limits on the resolution of data that can be made public.

Currently, the federal government allows only satellite images at 1.6-foot resolution or coarser to be sold commercially, according to GeoEye.

Along with raising resolution, mapping sites are also experimenting with angles. Microsoft, in its attempt to compete against the wildly popular Google Earth, touts a feature showing images of urban areas taken at a 45-degree angle. This enables viewers to see the facades of homes and businesses in addition to roofs.

But for satellite imaging data, such details aren't yet an option. O'Connell recalls delivering this disappointing news not long ago to a congressman, who wanted to know if it was possible to see prisoners in North Korean prisoner of war camps using satellites.

O'Connell replied: "Congressman, we're flying overhead, so the best you'd see is the top of someone's head."

Satellites Will See More, Faster

[Shammu]

Hamas outlines basic principles

Hamas document outlining principles of incoming Palestinian government surfaces Saturday night; Hamas says it is 'committed to the expulsion of the occupation and the right of return,' says it has 'right of resistance in all its forms'
Ali Waked

A document by Hamas outlining the incoming Palestinian government's basic principles and prompting criticism by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has been released.

"Resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right," the document declared. It was transferred to Abbas, and was made public on Saturday night, after being leaked to journalists.

Hamas declared in the document that it is "committed to the expulsion of the occupation and the right of return."

With that, the document said that the Hamas government would "address the reality created with the agreements with Israel."

Hamas designated prime minister Sheikh Ismael Haniyeh transferred the document to Abbas, who earlier responded coldly by saying that the principles were '"too vague.'

Addressing the question of whether Hamas would recognize Israel, the document stated that "this would done with consultation with the Palestinian organizations and institutions, and the Palestinian people in its entirety."

Hamas outlines basic principles

[Shammu]

Worker Was on Hot Spot When Volcano Blew

By RAY LILLEY, Associated Press Writer Sat Mar 18, 3:37 AM ET

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A young conservation worker who was checking a volcano's crater lake when it unexpectedly burst to life, spewing mounds of ash and soot, most likely died in the eruption in the remote nature reserve, a conservation official said Saturday.

The eruption in one of Raoul Island's three main craters — the first there since 1964 — threw rocks and boulders into the air and buried the area around the lake in mud and ash up to 16 feet deep.

A rescue team was expected to set sail from New Zealand on Sunday to inspect the remote island and assess prospects for recovering the missing worker, who was part of a small team monitoring the nature reserve. By opting for a three-day sea trip, rather than flying, officials virtually ruled out finding the worker alive.

"He was at the exact epicenter of the massive destruction," said Conservation Minister Chris Carter after speaking to a rescue worker who had witnessed the devastation.

Carter said the rescuer estimated the worker, who left an hour before the eruption for the crater lake for a routine check of the water temperature, had only a "1 to 2 percent chance" of surviving.

Two of the five surviving conservationists went in search of their missing colleague but could not get past a twisted mess of trees and mud and the erupting volcano forced them back. All five — three men and two women — were evacuated by helicopter to Auckland.

"They were very traumatized as one would expect. There has been only the six of them on the island since last October," Carter said. "They are like family members."

A member of the helicopter rescue mission said the group was distraught at leaving their workmate behind.

"They are clearly upset. The guy is a good friend and they're a fairly close group," senior Constable Barry Shepherd, a search and rescue expert, told reporters. The conservation workers did not immediately speak to the media.

An aerial search for the missing man, in his early 30s, was hampered by fading light and clouds of steam and ash. The man's name was not released.

John Funnel, the helicopter pilot who flew the rescue mission, said the eruption ripped up trees and dumped ash over half the 72-acre island. He said the dense clouds of ash would have brought the helicopter down if he had flown into them.

The rescue team would have had to "get right into the vent of the volcano which was still active in order to search for the missing party," he said. "Hovering in a crater lake when it has just been erupting is not where you want to be unless you absolutely have to."

A group of police, conservation officials and one vulcanologist was likely to set sail Sunday, but will only land if they decide it is safe based on visual checks and updates on seismic activity, said Rolien Elliot, the Conservation Department's area manager.

The volcano spewed steam and ash hundreds of yards into the air on Friday, and moderate earthquakes of magnitude 3 to 4 shook the island, but no lava or molten rock was reported flowing from the vent.

Vulcanologist Michael Rosenberg said the eruption was of a "moderate size" and looked similar to the one in 1964.

Friday's explosion "seems to have occurred with no immediate warning," New Zealand's main geological group, GNS Science said in a statement.

On Saturday, there were only clusters of small earthquakes and no obvious volcanic activity on the partly bush-covered island, GNS Science reported.

The last known eruption on Raoul Island, about 625 miles northeast of the New Zealand city of Auckland, was on Nov. 21, 1964, from a vent close to Green Lake. There were no casualties.

The chain to which it belongs — New Zealand's Kermadec Islands — was formed by a string of volcanoes that rose up to 26,000 feet from the ocean floor.

Worker Was on Hot Spot When Volcano Blew

[Shammu]

Louisiana Faces an Exodus From the Coast

By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 43 minutes ago

LAFITTE, La. - Once the salt water is in your veins, Louisiana's coastal folk say, it's hard to give up the lifestyle of moonlit shrimping trips, the town "fais do-do" dances and afternoons spent on the bayous angling for catfish.

But since last year's catastrophic hurricanes, this swampy land defined by Cajuns, cypress and tupelo gum forests, bayou-side saloons and, more recently, subdivisions may have become too vulnerable for that lifestyle to continue.

Even before the devastation caused by Katrina, Louisiana's swampy coast had been sinking by as much as 2 inches a year. Along with that subsidence, the area is even more susceptible to flooding because last year's hurricanes damaged vast tracts of wetlands — already shrinking because of man's activities — that used to buffer the area from storms blowing in off the Gulf of Mexico.

All of those factors will be reflected in new Federal Emergency Management Agency flood-vulnerability maps due to be released soon that are the basis for flood insurance rates.

The maps will likely make the insurance more costly, force residents to spend heavily to raise homes out of flood plains to qualify for coverage, make many other homes uninsurable and make lenders less willing to loan money for construction in flood-prone areas.

That new reality may threaten the state's coastal population and its heritage of shrimp fishing, alligator hunting, fur trapping and oyster harvesting.

Some of the roughhewn people down here won't leave willingly.

"You've got earthquakes, you've got fires, you've got volcanoes, you've got tornadoes in tornado alley," said A.J. Fabre, an outspoken leader among shrimp fishermen in Lafitte, about 30 miles south of New Orleans. "Where are you going to have everybody? In Missouri?"

Nearly every house in the area, most of them built on slabs, was flooded by Hurricane Rita. Now, families live in trailers as they rebuild.

"It's a quiet community. Virtually no crime. Kids steal a couple of bicycles," Fabre says.

But the future is gloomy. Fabre's place, a small brick house he inherited from his grandfather, has been condemned because of wind and flood damage. The only thing left of a shrimp processing plant there is a concrete slab, and the old family dock is barnacled, broken and useless.

With no flood insurance, Fabre isn't sure if he'll be able to rebuild. He and his wife might have to demolish the place and buy a mobile home.

He insists he is not defeated and lashes out at politicians, importers, the federal government.

"The fight has just begun," he said.

But many of his neighbors and friends aren't so sanguine.

"We're doomed," said Jimmy Terrebonne, a 46-year-old boat builder. He tells his children to get an education and get out of the fishing trades.

As for himself, he said, "I can't do anything else. I don't have an education. I ain't leaving until it's gone. When the land's gone, I'm leaving."

Many coastal experts believe life along the coast is going to change dramatically with the new flood maps.

"Where we had subdivisions in the marshes, they will not come back," said Shea Penland, a coastal scientist with the University of New Orleans. "I can't believe they're sustainable."

"There are going to be some significant changes across the board," said Butch Kinerney, a FEMA spokesman.

For one thing, much more is known since FEMA last calculated the area's flood vulnerability in 1984 about the area's rate of subsidence.

Last year, the National Geodetic Survey issued a report saying the area was sinking by a half-inch to 2 inches a year, and that was as of 1995.

"When they built the levees, it wasn't below sea level. It was dry land. Now it's dry land only because of the levees," said Roy Dokka, a Louisiana State University subsidence specialist.

About 1,000 homes damaged by Rita's storm surge in the heavily Cajun region southwest of Lafayette called Vermilion Parish might need to be raised to be eligible for insurance, said Robert LeBlanc, the parish's emergency preparedness director.

Younger people might leave, LeBlanc said.

Many others, however, are determined to stay.

"People like where they live, they're content," said Kimberly Chauvin, the wife of a shrimper who is thinking of raising their already-raised home up to 10 feet higher. "I wouldn't want to move to the city, not at all."

Louisiana Faces an Exodus From the Coast

[Shammu]

French Students' Protests Turn Fiery

By ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 1 minute ago

PARIS - Police loosed water cannons and tear gas on rioting students and activists rampaged through a McDonald's and attacked store fronts in the capital Saturday as demonstrations against a plan to relax job protections spread in a widening arc across France.

The protests, which drew some 500,000 people in cities across the country, were the biggest show yet of escalating anger that is testing the strength of the conservative government before elections next year.

In Paris, seven officers and 17 protesters were injured during two melees at the close of the march, at the Place de la Nation in eastern Paris and the Sorbonne University. Police said they arrested 156 people in the French capital.

Four cars were set afire, police said, and a McDonald's restaurant was attacked along with store fronts at the close of the march.

Tensions escalated later Saturday as about 500 youths moved on to the Sorbonne, trying to break through tall metal blockades erected after police stormed the Paris landmark a week ago to dislodge occupying students. The university has become a symbol of the protest.

Police turned water cannons on the protesters at the Sorbonne and were seen throwing youths to the ground, hitting them and dragging them into vans.

"Liberate the Sorbonne!" some protesters shouted. "Police everywhere, justice nowhere."

In an apparent effort to set fire to a police van serving as a blockade, protesters instead torched the entrance of a nearby Gap store, apparently by accident, engulfing the small porch in flames.

With commerce snarled in some cities, people asked whether Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin would stand firm on implementing the change that he says is needed to encourage hiring. The usually outspoken leader was silent Saturday.

Protest organizers urged President Jacques Chirac on Saturday to prevent the law from taking effect as expected in April.

The group issued an ultimatum, saying it expects an answer by Monday, when leaders will decide whether to continue protests that have paralyzed at least 16 universities and dominated political discourse for weeks.

"We give them two days to see if they understand the message we've sent," said Rene Jouan of the CFDT union.

Protests reached every corner of France, with organizers citing 160 marches from the small provincial town of Rochefort in the southwest to the major city of Lyon in the southeast.

In Marseille, extreme leftist youths climbed the facade of City Hall, replacing a French flag with a banner reading "Anticapitalism." Police used tear gas to disperse them and made several arrests.

Police also fired tear gas at a protest in Clermont-Ferrand, a central city where 10,000 people marched and about 100 youths threw beer cans and other projectiles at a building.

The Paris protest march was the biggest, attracting some 80,000 people, according to police. Organizers put the number at 300,000.

Some demonstrators became violent as the march ended. Youths set a car on fire, smashed a shop window, trashed a bus stop and threw stones, golf balls and other objects at police. Police responded with tear gas during skirmishes that lasted several hours.

Widespread discontent with the government has crystalized around a new type of job contract that Villepin says will alleviate France's sky-high youth unemployment by getting companies to risk hiring young workers.

Critics say the contract abolishes labor protections crucial to the social fabric.

"Aren't we the future of France?" asked Aurelie Silan, a 20-year-old student who joined a river of protesters in Paris.

Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope insisted on the need for a "spirit of dialogue."

"The hand is extended, the door is open," he said on France-3 TV network. However, he limited dialogue to "improving" Villepin's plan — not withdrawing it.

Waves of red union flags topped the densely packed crowd in Paris, which overflowed into side streets and stretched more than 3 1/2 miles under bright sunshine.

"Throw away the job contract, don't throw away the youth!" chanted a group of students shaking tambourines. Many wore plastic bags to illustrate their feeling that the new law reduces young people to disposable workers.

The law would allow businesses to fire young workers in the first two years on a job without giving a reason, removing them from protections that restrict layoffs of regular employees.

Companies are often reluctant to add employees because it is hard to let them go if business conditions worsen. Students see a subtext in the new law: make it easier to hire and fire to help France compete in a globalizing world economy.

Youth joblessness stands at 23 percent nationwide, and 50 percent among impoverished young people. The lack of work was blamed in part for the riots that shook France's depressed suburbs during the fall.

Chirac has pushed Villepin to act "as quickly as possible" to defuse the crisis, but has backed the contested measure.

On Friday night, a group of university presidents met with Villepin and called on him to withdraw the jobs plan for six months to allow for debate.

Failure to resolve the crisis could sorely compromise Villepin, who is believed to be Chirac's choice as his party's candidate in next year's presidential election.

French Students' Protests Turn Fiery

[Shammu]

Mass protests over French job law turn ugly

1 hour, 26 minutes ago

PARIS (AFP) - Calm returned to Paris after riot police teargassed scores of demonstrators in the wake of a demonstration by an estimated million people who took to the streets of France to protest a widely unpopular new labour law.

Hundreds of young demonstrators defied police following a peaceful march through Paris which attracted up to 350,000 people, hurling objects at officers who eventually drove them back, charging the crowd and using tear gas grenades.

Vehicles were set on fire and overturned, and nearby windows smashed. There were 166 arrests, while seven policemen and 17 demonstrators were injured in the unrest at the eastern Place de la Nation that lasted for six hours, police said.

About 500 students then marched on Paris' Sorbonne university in the Latin Quarter, the scene of earlier clashes.

Chanting "Liberate the Sorbonne!" the students charged and removed some barriers erected by police to block access to the university, and threw a Molotov cocktail at a riot police van, but a fire was quickly extinguished.

Police drove back the students with water cannon, and then deployed in front of the remaining barriers to prevent their advance.

In the Mediterranean port of Marseille hundreds of militants demonstrated, some trying to set fire to the entrance to the town hall before police drove them back. One officer was injured and six youths were arrested, police said.

There were also clashes in the northern city of Lille with police responding with tear gas, as well as Grenoble in the east and Clermont-Ferrand in the centre.

Unions said 1.5 million demonstrators took part in more than 150 rallies across the country against the centre-right government's First Employment Contract (CPE) -- drawing students, workers, pensioners and families.

The interior ministry put the overall turnout at just over 500,000, but unions urged Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to heed the message from the street.

The CPE, a contract for under 26-year-olds that can be terminated in the first two years without explanation, is supposed to encourage employers to take on young staff.

Drawn up in the wake of riots late last year in high-immigration city suburbs -- where youth unemployment can be as high as 50 percent -- the CPE was approved by parliament last week as part of a wider equal opportunities law.

But the opposition says the CPE is a step back from hard-won labour rights, and will make it more difficult than ever for young people to find long-term employment.

"The demand for withdrawal of the CPE is gathering ever greater force. Seventy percent of the French want it withdrawn, and 80 percent of young people. The government is in a dead-end," said Bernard Thibault of the CGT union.

"Today we can clearly see that the mobilisation is stronger than ever. Either the government listens to reason and withdraws the CPE, or it will be obliged to do so next week -- because we will be back in the street," said Bruno Julliard of the UNEF students' union.

The FIDL high-school students' union promised a new day of action on Thursday if the government does not back down.

Several leaders of the opposition Socialist Party including former prime minister Laurent Fabius and former minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn joined the Paris demonstration.

"Young people are less well-armed than we are to defend themselves. Getting into the workforce is already hard enough for them, and now they are putting up another obstacle," said Nicole Beauregard, a civil servant who attended the march with her teenage daughter.

Previous demonstrations in the last week ended in street fights and clouds of tear gas in Paris's Latin Quarter, violence which the authorities blamed on outside trouble-makers from the extreme left and right.

Two weeks of protests have been building steady momentum, with strikes affecting some 60 of the country's 84 universities and nationwide demonstrations Thursday drawing up to half a million university and high-school students.

An opinion poll Friday showed that 68 percent of the public oppose the youth jobs plan, up from 55 percent just over a week before.

The campaign of opposition has developed into a serious political crisis for the 52-year-old prime minister, who has made implementation of the CPE a personal mission but has been criticised -- from even within his own Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) -- for failing to consult properly in advance.

An opinion poll to be published Sunday shows his popularity rating has fallen to 37 percent -- down 16 points in two months.

Villepin has offered to add new "guarantees" to sweeten the pill and called for "dialogue", but student and union leaders say they will not enter talks unless the CPE is first abandoned.

President Jacques Chirac has so far stood by the prime minister -- backing the CPE and calling for negotiations -- but commentators said he would be keeping careful watch on the scale of the protests.

Mass protests over French job law turn ugly

[Shammu]

French Police Subdue Riots Over Jobs Law

By ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writer 16 minutes ago

PARIS - Police loosed water cannons and tear gas on rioting students and activists rampaged through a McDonald's and attacked store fronts in the capital Saturday as demonstrations against a plan to relax job protections spread in a widening arc across France.

The protests, which drew 500,000 people in some 160 cities across the country, were the biggest show yet of escalating anger that is testing the strength of the conservative government before elections next year.

At the close of a march in Paris that drew a crowd of tens of thousands, seven officers and 17 protesters were injured during two melees, at the Place de la Nation in eastern Paris and the Sorbonne University. Police said they arrested 156 people in the French capital.

Four cars were set afire, police said, and a McDonald's restaurant was attacked along with store fronts at the close of the march.

Tensions escalated later Saturday as about 500 youths moved on to the Sorbonne, trying to break through tall metal blockades erected after police stormed the Paris landmark a week ago to dislodge occupying students. The university has become a symbol of the protest.

Police turned water cannons on the protesters at the Sorbonne and were seen throwing youths to the ground, hitting them and dragging them into vans.

"Liberate the Sorbonne!" some protesters shouted. "Police everywhere, justice nowhere."

In an apparent effort to set fire to a police van serving as a blockade, protesters instead torched the entrance of a nearby Gap store, apparently by accident, engulfing the small porch in flames.

With commerce snarled in some cities, people asked whether Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin would stand firm on implementing the change that he says is needed to encourage hiring. The usually outspoken leader was silent Saturday.

Protest organizers urged President Jacques Chirac on Saturday to prevent the law from taking effect as expected in April.

The group issued an ultimatum, saying it expects an answer by Monday, when leaders will decide whether to continue protests that have paralyzed at least 16 universities and dominated political discourse for weeks.

"We give them two days to see if they understand the message we've sent," said Rene Jouan of CFDT, France's largest union.

The law would allow businesses to fire young workers in the first two years on a job without giving a reason, removing them from protections that restrict layoffs of regular employees.

Companies are often reluctant to add employees because it is hard to let them go if business conditions worsen. Students see a subtext in the new law: make it easier to hire and fire to help France compete in a globalizing world economy.

Youth joblessness stands at 23 percent nationwide, and 50 percent among impoverished young people. The lack of work was blamed in part for the riots that shook France's depressed suburbs during the fall.

Protests on Saturday reached every corner of France — most of them largely peaceful — with organizers citing 160 marches from the small provincial town of Rochefort in the southwest to the major city of Lyon in the southeast.

In Marseille, extreme leftist youths climbed the facade of City Hall, replacing a French flag with a banner reading "Anticapitalism." Police used tear gas to disperse them and made several arrests.

Police also fired tear gas at a protest in Clermont-Ferrand, a central city where 10,000 people marched and about 100 youths threw beer cans and other projectiles at a building.

The Paris protest march was the biggest, attracting some 80,000 people, according to police. Organizers put the number at 300,000.

Widespread discontent with the government has crystalized around a new type of job contract that Villepin says will alleviate France's sky-high youth unemployment by getting companies to risk hiring young workers.

Critics say the contract abolishes labor protections crucial to the social fabric.

"Aren't we the future of France?" asked Aurelie Silan, a 20-year-old student who joined a river of protesters in Paris.

Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope insisted on the need for a "spirit of dialogue."

"The hand is extended, the door is open," he said on France-3 TV network. However, he limited dialogue to "improving" Villepin's plan — not withdrawing it.

Waves of red union flags topped the densely packed crowd in Paris, which overflowed into side streets and stretched more than 3 1/2 miles under bright sunshine.

"Throw away the job contract, don't throw away the youth!" chanted a group of students shaking tambourines. Many wore plastic bags to illustrate their feeling that the new law reduces young people to disposable workers.

Some demonstrators became violent as the march ended. Youths set a car on fire, smashed a shop window, trashed a bus stop and threw stones, golf balls and other objects at police. Police responded with tear gas during skirmishes that lasted several hours.

Chirac has pushed Villepin to act "as quickly as possible" to defuse the crisis, but has backed the contested measure.

On Friday night, a group of university presidents met with Villepin and called on him to withdraw the jobs plan for six months to allow for debate.

Failure to resolve the crisis could sorely compromise Villepin, who is believed to be Chirac's choice as his party's candidate in next year's presidential election.

French Police Subdue Riots Over Jobs Law

[Shammu]

Grenade Blast Cripples Iraq Vet's Memory

By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 39 minutes ago

RICHMOND HILL, Ga. - His 3-year-old son Nicholas' first steps, the first time Liam, his newborn, smiled — Staff Sgt. Douglas Piper lived to see them. Then his scarred memory erased even those precious moments.

"I can't remember what they did yesterday," Piper says. "Sometimes, I can't remember what I did yesterday. The days are broken."

Iraq left the 30-year-old Piper in his own personal fog of war, one in which remembering the moments and days since April 2003 can be as confusing a puzzle as predicting his civilian future.

Three years ago, in the war's first month, Piper became one of the now more than 17,000 U.S. troops wounded in action. A grenade blast in Baghdad mangled his right eye, collapsed his right eardrum and slammed his brain against the inside of his skull.

In a conflict where explosions account for roughly two-thirds of Army combat wounds, and improved body armor and field medicine increase chances of survival, brain injuries such as Piper's are common.

At home in southeast Georgia, he drives his pickup truck, and even took a recent ski trip, despite having no depth perception after losing his eye. In public, he pops his prosthetic eye in and out of its socket without self-consciousness. He hears fine with the help of a hearing aid.

Yet his doctors tell him at least 80 percent of his short-term memory has been destroyed.

Watching "CSI" or "Law and Order" on TV with his wife, Sherry, he often has trouble following the plot. He has problems recalling the birthdates of their three boys — Matthew, 4, Nicholas, 3, and 13-week-old Liam. He knows the route to his desk job at Hunter Army Airfield in nearby Savannah, but needs help keeping track of appointments.

Sometimes he'll walk into a room and forget what he's doing there. Other times, he'll stop talking in mid-sentence and grasp for the word.

"I'll try to point at something like, `What is that?' he says. "The names of things, the words, sometimes they're just gone."

Routine and his wife's guidance help compensate. He keeps his keys, wallet, cell phone, medications and spare prosthetic eyes in a basket on the kitchen counter so he won't lose them. Sherry Piper enters his doctor visits and other appointments into her Palm Pilot.

Still, Piper puts his injuries in perspective. Among the other wounded soldiers he met at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, there was always someone whose injuries seemed worse — a Bradley armored-vehicle driver blinded in both eyes by a rocket-propelled grenade, a sniper who had been shot through the eye with a bullet that passed through his brain.

"I'd just think to myself, it could have been worse," Piper said, "so don't even think about complaining."

Walter Reed, home to one of eight brain injury facilities run jointly by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, has treated more than 600 troops with traumatic brain injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003.

Brain injuries were diagnosed in 28 percent of wounded service members sent to Walter Reed from January 2003 to November 2005. Common effects include headaches, sleep disorders, trouble concentrating and memory loss.

After six surgeries between April 2003 and August 2005, Piper expects to be cleared for a medical discharge by the Army in the next two months.

"A part of him, I think, does yearn to stay in the military," said Kim Mayes, his medical case manager at Hunter. "He'll walk in, if he saw something on the news, and say, `Man, I wish I could go back over there.'"

Piper signed with an Army recruiter at 17, entering the service a year later in October 1994. As a teenager in Bridgewater, N.H., he saw the Army as a chance to escape the doldrums of a small town where most young men went to work manufacturing rubber gaskets at a local factory.

He passed the rigorous training required to join the elite Army Ranger regiment, and served eight years in its Hunter-based battalion. He planned on a full 20-year military career.

Then came the war — the last thing he remembers with clarity.

He wanted to deploy to Iraq so badly that he left the Rangers because, having just joined a new company, he expected to be sidelined. As war loomed in early 2003, he transferred to the Pathfinder Company of the 6th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment at Fort Campbell, Ky. Eight days after he arrived, Piper left for Kuwait.

On April 13, 2003, less than month after U.S. troops crossed the Iraqi border, Piper was leading his six-man team in a hunt for weapons and munitions in southern Baghdad.

The sun was setting outside a library building where the soldiers had discovered a stockpile of small arms and mortar rounds. Piper stood outside, deciding which building to clear next.

A car passed on the street. Someone leaned out the window and lobbed a grenade, announcing an ambush with an explosion a few feet from Piper's back. The blast flung him five feet, sprawled facedown behind a Humvee.

"I didn't feel any pain or anything like that, but I saw this huge halo of blood in front of me," Piper recalled.

He reached to feel his right eye, but his hand slid straight to his ear. It felt like the side of his face had been flattened, the bones of his eye socket pulverized.

Amid the fighting, two soldiers grabbed Piper to rush him to a medivac helicopter. He insisted on giving them his ammunition and grenades first. En route to the nearest field hospital, he blacked out.

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, an Army hospital in Germany, was Piper's first stop out of Iraq. On his third day there, he insisted doctors wheel him to a bathroom mirror so he could see his face.

"When they told me the extent of the injury, I was thinking to myself, `I'm going to have a big hole in my head,'" Piper said. "My main concern was with the boys. What would they think?"

Beneath the bandages, his skin was scabbed and bruised and his right eye had turned completely black. But his face was intact. The crushed bones of his eye socket could be repaired.

On April 21, 2003, doctors at Walter Reed removed Piper's eye and reconstructed shattered bones scattered in tiny fragments from his brow into his nasal cavity. Five months later, he was fitted for a prosthetic eye, hand-painted to match the hazel hue of his remaining eye.

Piper focused on getting used to navigating with one eye. He was often bumping into walls and objects on his right side. Once, he tripped over a bush during a stroll outside the Army hospital.

"He never once said, `Oh, great, now I'm never going to be able to do this,'" Sherry Piper said. "The day he got back from Walter Reed, we came to the airport and got in the car. I was going to drive and he said, `No, I'm going to drive.'"

The Pipers say it was several months before they started to notice symptoms of his memory loss. At first, Sherry Piper attributed it to her husband's hearing loss.

"I would just be talking to him and he wasn't paying attention. I'd say, `Did you hear what I just said?' and he'd say, `No,'" she recalled. "That's how we kind of realized he was having a problem remembering."

Neurologists confirmed Piper had frontal-lobe damage to his brain, affecting his short-term memory. Periodic testing over the past year has shown little improvement, said Mayes, his medical case manager.

Piper carried a notebook for a while, jotting lists of errands and appointments, but kept losing it. For now, he relies on his wife to keep his schedule, and phones her when he feels he's forgotten something.

Grappling with short-term memory loss hasn't stopped Piper from looking to the long-term. Several months ago, he began working in his off-duty hours as an onsite supervisor for a construction company.

He isn't sure whether he'll stick with construction, but it seemed a logical first step. He's a woodworking hobbyist, and has made bookshelves, a cedar chest and end tables for his home. He likes working outdoors, especially as a break from Army desk work.

"I've been a trigger-puller for 11 years," Piper said. "I had to figure out what I was interested in other than blowing things up."

He treats his injuries with similar humor — deadpan matter-of-factness mixed with shock-and-awe. And the family is getting in on the act.

During a recent trip to the mall, 4-year-old Matthew asked if Piper could show his false eye to another boy who refused to believe his father had one.

"So I pop it out and clean it off and hand it to him, and he walks over there and opens his hand and goes, `See!,'" Piper said, laughing. "That boy about freaked out."

Grenade Blast Cripples Iraq Vet's Memory

[Shammu]

Sunni Leaders Say U.S.-Iran Talks Amount to Meddling

By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: March 18, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 17 — Sunni Arab political leaders on Friday denounced an agreement between the United States and Iran to hold face-to-face talks about solutions to the unrest in Iraq, saying the conversations would amount to meddling by foreign nations in Iraq's domestic affairs.

The Iraqi Consensus Front, the country's main Sunni political bloc, issued a statement calling the agreement "an obvious unjustified interference" and asserted that it was not obligated to comply with any results of the negotiations.

The Sunni leadership has long criticized Tehran's influence over Iraq's powerful Shiite religious parties, and its opposition to the talks could add another obstacle to the grinding efforts by Iraq's political leaders to forge a coalition government.

"The Iraqis in the current government should have these talks with the Iranians and discuss the level of intervention of Iran," Naseer al-Ani, a member of the Sunni Arab bloc, said in a telephone interview. "It's not up to the American ambassador to talk to Iran about Iraq."

The agreement between the United States and Iran was announced Thursday. Ali Larijani, general secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Iran's participation came at the request of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party with ties to Iran.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the Bush administration would not meet with Iran to negotiate the future of Iraq but rather to voice its concerns about what he called Iran's "unhelpful role" in Iraq. It remained unclear on Friday whether Iraqi leaders would be invited to the meetings.

The Sunni criticism came as leaders of Iraq's major political blocs, as well as the American ambassador, gathered in the heavily fortified compound of President Jalal Talabani to discuss the formation of a new Iraqi government.

According to several participants, the discussions focused on the proposal to create a national security council composed of leaders of the executive, judicial and legislative branches, as well as representatives of the country's main political blocs. The council would be consulted on pivotal national issues, like the economy, oil policy, public services and security.

Some Sunni leaders wanted the council's decisions to have binding executive authority. But, several participants said, the Shiite leadership and others were insisting that the council have only advisory powers, thereby safeguarding the constitutional powers of the executive.

A working group planned to continue the discussions on Saturday and was expected to submit its conclusions to the blocs' political leaders by Sunday, officials said.

In Halabja, Kurdistan, militias loyal to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party that governs the eastern part of the autonomous region, began a crackdown after a riot on Thursday in which demonstrators destroyed a museum dedicated to the thousands who perished in a poison gas attack by Saddam Hussein's security forces in 1988.

The riot began as a rally against government corruption but became violent after government guards fired weapons over the protesters' heads.

"The episode is a painful reminder that reforms are needed everywhere in this part of the world," Barham Saleh, Iraq's planning minister and a Kurd, said in an interview on Friday.

Although the riot may have arisen in part from the legitimate grievances of frustrated people, he said, radical Islamists might have taken advantage of the discord to foment violence. "Obviously this has to be investigated thoroughly," he said.

American and Iraqi security forces continued their search for insurgent hide-outs near Samarra on Friday, the second day of an assault in the area, north of Baghdad, though the results appeared to be modest and the American command began to return some troops to their bases.

About 10 people were detained on Friday, bringing the number of suspected insurgents captured during the raid to 47, said Lt. Col. Edward Loomis, a spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division, which is leading the operation. At least 17 have been released after questioning, he said, adding that troops uncovered no new weapons stockpiles on Friday.

The operation has garnered widespread attention, in part because Samarra is where a Shiite shrine was bombed by insurgents last month, setting off a wave of sectarian violence. But the military has not suggested that this assault was a direct response to the bombing.

The American military command described the push as the largest "air assault" since the invasion in 2003. The military defines air assault as the insertion of troops by aircraft. Some television networks erroneously used the term "airstrikes," conjuring images of the "shock and awe" bombing campaign that heralded the invasion.

But there were no reported aerial bombardments during this operation, and Colonel Loomis said Friday that the American and Iraqi forces had encountered no armed resistance and suffered no casualties.

The American military reported that a soldier from the 101st Airborne was shot and killed at an observation post in Samarra on Thursday, but the incident appeared to be unrelated to the operation.

In Baghdad, the authorities recovered two more bodies, both handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head, according to an official in the Interior Ministry. At least 170 bodies, all showing evidence of execution-style killings, have been recovered around Baghdad in the last 10 days, according to Iraqi officials.

Though the motives for most of the killings remain unclear, officials fear that the wave of executions is a continuation of the sectarian reprisals that followed the destruction of the Samarra shrine last month.

Gunmen fired on Shiite pilgrims in several locations on Friday, killing at least one and wounding 12, the ministry official said. An improvised bomb, apparently directed at pilgrims, exploded on the road between Mahmudiya and Karbala, killing one and wounding four, the official said.

Thousands of Shiites are converging on Karbala, in the south, to celebrate the end of the 40-day mourning period commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

Sunni Leaders Say U.S.-Iran Talks Amount to Meddling

[Shammu]

Holy smoke! Chinese city turns cigarettes to medicine

2 hours, 9 minutes ago

BEIJING (Reuters) - A city in China, a country that's home to the world's most enthusiastic smokers, is crushing fake cigarettes to make medicine, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

The north-western city of Xian is using the counterfeit cigarettes to extract solanesol, a compound found in tobacco which is used to treat cardiovascular disease, it said.

"We used to incinerate the fake cigarettes, which is wasteful and causes air pollution," Xinhua quoted Zhou Yaqing, vice director of the provincial tobacco monopoly, as saying.

A kilo of solanesol is worth about $200, and 30 tons of tobacco leaf can produce up to 120 kilos, Xinhua added.

China is the world's largest cigarette producer, with a growing market of about 320 million. Chinese cigarettes are also among the cheapest in the world -- a packet can cost as little as 8 U.S. cents -- and smoking kills 1.2 million people a year in China, according to the World Health Organisation.

Fake cigarettes, made of poor quality tobacco and often topped up with wood chips, are commonly sold on Chinese streets.

Holy smoke! Chinese city turns cigarettes to medicine

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Stolen Van Gogh returned after 7 years

Fri Mar 17, 8:58 AM ET

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch bank got a bonus on Thursday when police turned up with its stolen Van Gogh painting during an earnings news conference.

"The Pollard Willow" was one of the last works the Dutch painter made in Nuenen in 1885 before leaving the southern region of the Netherlands where he was born.

The still life on a wooden panel, valued at several million euros, was stolen from a meeting room at F. van Lanschot Bankiers' Den Bosch headquarters in May 1999 in a heist police still have yet to solve.

"The most important thing was to get the painting back in a good state," Jac Nouwens, chief investigator for the district police, told reporters.

Two men, aged 25 and 33 were arrested for attempting to sell the painting and are being interrogated, Nouwens said. He declined to give more details of the continuing investigation.

Van Lanschot, which owns some 3,500 works of art, is still looking for a secure place to display the painting.

"For the time being we will definitely keep it in the safe. We need to get used to the idea again that it's back," Van Lanschot Chief Executive Floris Deckers told reporters.

Another piece of good news at the news conference was that F. Van Lanschot Bankiers' 2005 profit jumped 51 percent to 152 million euros ($183 million).

Stolen Van Gogh returned after 7 years

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Algeria says up to 200,000 killed in Islamic insurgency since 1992

Sat Mar 18, 8:52 PM ET

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Up to 200,000 Algerians have died in a 15-year Islamic insurgency, the head of the government human rights body said Saturday - the highest official toll ever given.

The fighting started in 1992 when the army cancelled a second round of voting in Algeria's first multiparty legislative elections, to thwart a likely victory by the now-banned Islamic Salvation Front.

Between 150,000 and 200,000 had died since the violence began, Farouk Ksentini said.

The number killed has never been clear, but Ksentini's figure was the highest estimated toll given by anyone representing the state. The dead also included security forces, he said.

Ksentini is the head of the Algerian Consultative Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said some 700 to 800 Islamic insurgents continue to do battle in various parts of the country.

A state of emergency has been in place since the insurgency and it will "remain in place for as long as there is terrorist activity," the minister said.

The state "will not give up the anti-terrorist fight," Zerhouni said.

Under a reconciliation plan, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has freed 1,236 prisoners, including many convicted extremists.

More than 2,000 convicted or suspected extremists are to be freed or get sentence reductions.

The plan was overwhelmingly approved in a September referendum in an effort to turn the page on an era of terror.

Ksentini, quoted by government daily El Moudjahid, did not exclude eventual freedom for one of the country's most notorious terrorists, Amar Saifi.

Saifi is best known as Abderrazak El Para, a former special forces paratrooper held responsible for kidnapping 32 European tourists in 2003, many of them German.

Algeria says up to 200,000 killed in Islamic insurgency since 1992

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Lebanon President Proposes Early Elections

By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer Sat Mar 18, 10:09 PM ET

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, under pressure from anti-Syrian groups to step down, said Saturday he would stay in office until the end of his term but proposed early parliamentary elections as a way out of the presidential stalemate.

President Emile Lahoud also rejected calls by some anti-Syrian leaders for Hezbollah to disarm in line with a 2004 U.N. resolution, stressing that the anti-Israeli militant guerrilla group should keep its weapons until a peace settlement is reached for the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Lahoud's remarks came as leaders of Lebanon's rival factions are in the midst of a dialogue on the president's fate and Hezbollah's disarmament.

The anti-Syrian coalition, which controls the majority in Lebanon's parliament, is pushing for Lahoud to step down, accusing him of being the top enforcer of Syria's policy in Lebanon. Anti-Syrian groups have accused Syria of responsibility for last year's assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Syria has denied involvement in Hariri's death. The assassination led to demonstrations against Syria's decades-long dominance of Lebanese affairs and magnified international pressure on Damascus to withdraw its troops, which it eventually did.

Referring to the anti-Syrian groups, Lahoud said in an interview with Al-Jazeera satellite channel broadcast Saturday night: "If they do not fear anything, let them call for early elections and let the new legislators elect a new president."

Lahoud said with the emergence of new alliances since last year's parliamentary elections, the anti-Syrian groups no longer controlled the majority in the 128-member legislature.

He said early parliamentary elections was one way to break the presidential deadlock to determine what the people want. Otherwise, he said, "I will not leave office."

Lahoud has rejected repeated demands by anti-Syrian groups to step down, promising to stay in office until his extended term ends in 2007.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri acknowledged Tuesday that Lebanon is facing "a government crisis" because of the call for Lahoud's resignation. The anti-Syrians command a majority in Parliament, but not the two-thirds required to force the president's resignation.

Lahoud was elected president in 1998 for a six-year term that was extended for another three years in September 2004 by pro-Syrian legislators despite opposition from the United States and France.

Lebanon President Proposes Early Elections