GREECE 
The police clashed with protesters outside Parliament in 
the early hours of Thursday before a second decisive vote expected to approve an austerity bill needed to avert default.
The police fought running battles with stone-throwing 
protesters on Wednesday as Greece voted to push through an austerity plan of tax hikes, spending targets and privatisations agreed as part of an EU/IMF bailout.
Thousands of Greeks have taken to the streets in recent weeks belonging to ADEDY, the public sector union representing half a million civil servants, and GSEE, which represents 2 million private sector workers.

POLAND 
The Solidarity Trade Union organised a day of protests in Warsaw against the centre-right government on Thursday, one day before Poland assumes the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union for the first time.
Solidarity, heir to the organisation that toppled the communist regime in 1989, plans a petition to demand an increase in the minimum wage and a lowering of the excise duty on fuel and the protesters will then march through the capital to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s residence to hand it over.
Solidarity has also invited workers from other European countries including crisis-stricken Greece to join the protests.

BRITAIN 
Thousands of British teachers and civil servants went on strike on Thursday over plans to reform public sector pensions, launching what could be extended action testing the government’s resolve to drive through austerity measures.
Schools closed as teachers stayed away and travelers face delays at ports and airports as immigration officials join the protest. 
The government and unions said talks over public sector pension reforms made progress on June 27 but the strikes by up to 750,000 teachers and civil servants would still go ahead.
Public sector workers are facing a wage freeze and more than 300,000 job losses as the government cuts spending. For some in the unions, the pension reform was the last straw and they have vowed to stage coordinated national action in what could be Britain’s worst labour stoppages for decades.

SPAIN
Dozens of “los indignados” (the indignant) rallying against high unemployment and economic stagnation have camped outside Parliament to protest as lawmakers debated amendments to the Socialist government’s wage reform bill, meant to make the economy more competitive. The reforms were decreed into law by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s cabinet on June 10 and have been criticised by both unions and business groups.
On June 15, politicians in the Catalonia region of northeastern Spain were forced to enter parliament by helicopter or under police escort as protests grew against a planned 10% cut in public spending.
Last month, tens of thousands of demonstrators, angry over unemployment and austerity measures, packed Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square before local elections. Demonstrators have filled Spain’s city plazas, outraged over austerity measures, marking a shift after years of patience over a long economic slump.
At night the crowds on the square have swelled to up to 30,000 people. Hundreds of protesters camp out overnight and occupy the plaza during the day.

FRANCE 
Solidarity with “los indignados” in Madrid has already inspired 
several dozen French youths to spend nights camped out at the Place de la Bastille, the Paris square where a jail was torn down during the 1789 French Revolution.

Washington, June 30
Seeking “utter destruction” of the Al-Qaida, the US has chalked out a strategy to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat the terror network and its core leadership in the Af-Pak region, where they have found a safe haven.

“We seek nothing less than the utter destruction of this evil that calls itself Al-Qaida,” John Brennan, the President’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, said yesterday, laying out the Obama administration’s plan to battle the Al-Qaida in the era after Osama bin Laden.

A factsheet on national counter-terrorism strategy issued by the White House said its ultimate objective is clear and precise: “We will disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat the Al-Qaida, its leadership core in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, its affiliates and adherents to ensure the security of our citizens and interests.”

“This strategy builds upon the progress we have made in the decade since 9/11, in partnership with Congress, to build our counter-terrorism and homeland security capacity as a nation. It neither represents a wholesale overhaul - nor a wholesale retention - of previous policies and strategies,” the factsheet said.

It said the “principal focus” of this counter-terrorism strategy is the network that poses the most direct and significant threat to the United States- the Al-Qaida, its affiliates and its adherents.

In his speech at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Brennan said the US-Pakistan partnership is critical for success against the Al-Qaida.

Militant organisations are “a real cancer” within Pakistan, which is facing a challenge to eradicate terror forces within its borders, Brennan said. “My view is that there is a real cancer within Pakistan, from the standpoint of militant organisations,” he said in response to a question.

“Whether you’re talking about the Al-Qaida, whether you’re talking about the Pakistani Taliban or TTP, Haqqani group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, others, there is I think a general recognition in the United States as well as throughout the world, that Pakistan has a real challenge ahead of it to uproot and eradicate the forces of militancy within Pakistan.” — PTI 

New York, June 30
About 150 turtles, in search of beaches to lay their eggs, crawled into the busy tarmac of John F Kennedy airport here and delayed dozens of flights.

The parade of slow-moving diamondback terrapins began about 6.45 a.m. on Wednesday. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said there were so many turtles on one runway and nearby taxiways that air controllers were forced to move departing flights to another runway.

“We ceded to Mother Nature,” said Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the JFK airport, which is surrounded by a bay and wetland areas.

The Federal Aviation Authority said flight delays were averaging about 30 minutes. “The diamondback terrapins were trying to get to an ideal location to lay their eggs. That’s a sandy area that happens to be across Runway 4,” Carol Bannerman of the US Department of Agriculture said.

The turtles were primarily female, and the fertilisation of their eggs occurs in the water, she said. “This happens every year,” Marsico said. “I guess some years there is more turtle activity,” CNN quoted Marsico as saying.

This is not the first time turtles have invaded the runways at JFK. Seventy-eight turtles emerged one day in 2009, according to Marsico — PTI 

Beijing, June 30
He might be the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, but the economic policies Mao Zedong followed have few takers today in the Communist Party of China, which believes “he did it all wrong”.

Ge Xiaoguang left) uses an elevator in front of a giant portrait of Mao Zedong in his working studio located between the Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in Beijing on Wednesday. — Reuters

In fact, as it celebrates its 90th anniversary, the party says Mao’s ways resulted in “chaos in entire society” and it was a policy crafted out of the lessons learnt from his failures that have put China on a path to economic glory.

The CPC now attributes its success in stirring economic development in China in the past three decades to economic reforms propounded by Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping, and the party’s ability to learn from past failures.

“Mao did it all wrong because he tried to develop the economy in a revolutionary way,” Xie Chuntao (Xie), Vice-Director of the Party History Department at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, told state-run Global Times.

Xie said: “Mao told his colleagues in Yan’an (his home province) that the party must let the masses to supervise the government. He then began his way of implementing democracy, which resulted in chaos throughout the entire society”.

The CPC, which had its ups and downs in its 62-year uninterrupted rule of China, will turn 90 on July 1 and the party is currently carrying out a massive campaign to revitalise itself by recreating its past spirit.

Xie said the liberalised atmosphere brought in by Deng has made CPC take decisions with objective reality. “As Deng once said the system is the most decisive factor. The bad have nowhere to hide in a working system and the good may turn bad when in a rotten system. “Democracy, without surrendering to the whims of individuals, has to be implemented systematically within the frame of the law,” he said.

“Nowadays, policies and regulations also have to be made in accordance with objective reality,” Xie said.

CPC’s new policy of ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ brought in by Deng, was successful because it contained important lessons of Mao’s era.

“Mao believed that he learned lessons from life, which he formulated into the Mao Zedong Thought,” he said, adding that according to Deng’s writings, the reform and opening-up policy simply wouldn’t have existed without the lessons of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

The Cultural Revolution aimed at purging the society of “revisionists and reactionaries” resulted in the killing of millions of people across China. “Deng was politically purged twice before finally reaching the top spot in the Party, so he enjoyed the better understanding of mistakes than everyone else. Failures were followed by successes. To some extent, this was how Deng’s theory was formed,” he said.

Deng, a Vice-Premier under Mao was virtually exiled as a “fitter” at a tractor tool manufacturing unit in Nanchang along with his family where he spent several years in isolation before he was brought back years before Mao’s death in 1976 after which he took control of the party. — PTI

Beijing, June 30
Reclusive Chinese painter Ge Xiaoguang's art has gazed over one of the world's most famous city squares for decades. For 30 years, he has painted the portraits of former paramount leader Mao Zedong that look across Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The giant oil paintings of the "Great Helmsman" have kept watch from the Gate of Heavenly Peace since the Communist Party won the civil war and declared a New China on October 1, 1949. "I feel honoured to have done this all these years. It is a sacred job. The sense of duty is quite strong," Ge said.

The paintings, now made of glass fibre and reinforced plastic, are 20 feet high and 15 feet wide, and weigh up to 1.5 tonne. Ge keeps a low-profile and has refused countless requests for interviews. But he gave Reuters access to his studio near the imposing Forbidden City ahead of Friday's 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

Paintbrushes in hand and standing atop a moving platform, 58-year-old Ge gently smoothes the surface of the canvas, creating an airbrushed effect that lends the chairman a benevolent glow. "The key in the portrait is to depict Chairman Mao's presence. It's really important to manage to show the charisma that he had as a great leader," he said.

Born in Beijing in 1953, Ge learned to paint the large-scale portraits from his predecessor Wang Guodong. When Wang retired in 1976 after Mao's death, Ge formally became the fourth artist to take up the vaunted position. He now leads a team of artists that depict China's political leaders, from Mao to current president Hu Jintao. Ge alone paints Mao.

Every year since 1977, he has created a new portrait, each one slightly different, which replaces the old one during the night between Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, China's National Day. During the 1989 pro-democracy protests centred on Tiananmen Square, three demonstrators splattered Mao's portrait with paint, and later received long jail terms.

Today, the tens of thousands of people that flock to the world's largest square are greeted by Mao's imposing portrait, which currently looks directly at a huge hammer and sickle crafted from flowers for the Party's birthday. — Reuters