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Protests against pension bill flare up in France
Xi in line to succeed Hu as Chinese Prez
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No regrets but I made tactical
errors: Obama
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Protests against pension bill flare up in France
Paris, October 18 The government, which has stood firm on President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age through months of protests, assured the public infrastructure would not freeze up despite a week-long strike at refineries that dried up supplies at hundreds of the roughly 12,500 petrol stations nationwide. “The situation is critical,” a spokeswoman at Exxon Mobil said. “Anyone looking for diesel in the Paris and Nantes (Western France) regions will have problems,” she said. Strike action was ramping up ahead of a nationwide march on Tuesday and with a final Senate vote on the pension bill set for Wednesday it was looking like a make-or-break week for Sarkozy. Workers at France’s 12 refineries were in their seventh day of a strike today and protesters were blocking access to many fuel distribution depots around the country. The UFIP oil industry lobby has said France could see serious fuel supply problems by mid-week, meaning the government may have to tap emergency reserves. The DGAC aviation authority urged airlines to reduce flights to Paris’s Orly airport by 50 per cent and to all other airports by 30 per cent on Tuesday. The CGT union said it was calling on workers to protest at airports nationwide on Wednesday as well. The union, the largest at Air France, said the protests would not necessarily involve blocking airport access but that it was an option. Tuesday will be the sixth day of major weekday protests and work stoppages called by national labour union confederations since June but the unrest has intensified since last week when unions at railways and refineries began open-ended industrial action, joined now by truck drivers and delivery workers. The International Energy Agency, which overlooks strategic oil supplies in OECD countries, said France had some 98 days of fuel stocks between industry reserves and government reserves and that the country had started to tap the industry stocks. — Reuters Stemming THE deficit
A majority of people back protests against the plan to raise minimum and full retirement ages by two years to 62 and 67, respectively, a measure the government says is the only way to stem a ballooning pension deficit.
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Xi in line to succeed Hu as Chinese Prez
Beijing, October 18 Xi's promotion was announced at the close of the crucial Communist Party of China (CPC) plenum, which also pledged to make "steady and vigorous" efforts to promote political restructuring, official Xinhua news agency
reported. Xi is expected to become the party chief in 2012 and later may take over from Hu as President in
2013. His appointment could be a signal of a major reshuffle in China as along with President Hu, Premier Wen Jiabao and as many as seven of the nine current members of the key Politburo Standing Committee are expected to stand down in 2012 having completed two consecutive
terms. This will pave the way for a takeover by a new generation of leaders in a country that tends to work out succession in advance to prevent power struggles among senior
officials. The Chinese Vice-President is following Communist party tradition in the footsteps of Hu Jintao, who also became President and party chief after heading the Central Military Commission. Though Xi was regarded as natural successor to Hu, doubts arose last year when he was not appointed to this post, setting off speculation that the President may have been backing someone else. — PTI
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No regrets but I made tactical
errors: Obama
Washington, October 18 In an interview weeks ahead of crucial midterm elections, Obama confessed to The New York Times that he had probably not focused enough on public relations during his first 20 months in office, which, like it or not, is an all-important part of the job. “Given how much stuff was coming at us, we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right,” he was quoted as saying in a lengthy magazine
piece. With Republicans poised to make big gains in congressional and gubernatorial races in the November 2 elections, Obama and top aides also quoted in the article discussed ways to reboot his stalled presidency. In a reinvented administration, which aides have dubbed “Obama 2.0”, he will make sure he plays more by Washington’s rules so that his accomplishments don’t get drowned out by the opposition
Republicans. Nonetheless, Obama, who took the helm in January 2009 with the US in the midst of two wars and facing a financial crisis unseen since the Great Depression, said his administration’s record had been commendable. “I keep a checklist of what we committed to doing, and we’ve probably accomplished 70 per cent of the things that we talked about during the campaign,” he said. — AFP
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Super typhoon lashes Philippines
Cauayan, October 18 The huge storm striking the Philippines drowned at least one man and was expected to plunge later into China, where authorities evacuated 1,40,000 people from a coastal province. The storm could head later in the week to Vietnam, where 27 deaths from flooding already have been reported in recent days, in addition to the bus passengers snatched by floodwaters today and feared dead. Megi packed sustained winds of 225 km per hour and gusts of 260 kph as it made landfall today at Palanan Bay in Isabela province, felling trees and utility poles and cutting off power, phone and Internet services in many areas. It appeared to be losing some of its power while crossing the mountains of the Philippines’ main northern island of Luzon. With more than 3,600 Filipinos riding out the typhoon in sturdy school buildings, town halls, churches and relatives’ homes, roads in and out of coastal Isabela province were deserted and blocked by collapsed trees and power lines. One man who had just rescued his water buffalo slipped and fell into a river and probably drowned, said Bonifacio Cuarteros, an official with the Cagayan provincial disaster agency. — AP
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French truck drivers staged go-slow operations on highways, rail strikes intensified and petrol stations ran out of fuel today as protests gathered pace ahead of a Senate vote on an unpopular pension
overhaul.
