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Protests over pension cuts cripple Britain
Demonstrators march with banners as they hold a protest in Birmingham on Wednesday. — AFP Egypt Poll |
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US Secretary of state Hillary Clinton steps out of her plane after landing in Naypyitaw on Wednesday. — Reuters
Iran’s embassy in UK shut
MJ’s doc gets 4 yrs in jail
The four Indian students at the climate change conference in
Durban. Tribune photo: Betwa Sharma
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Protests over pension cuts cripple Britain London, November 30 The 24-hour strike is expected to disrupt hospitals, courts, job centres, driving tests and council services, such as libraries, community centres and refuse collections. Teachers and heads are taking to the picket lines, affecting almost three in four schools, according to early Government figures. However, it is feared this number could rise. Airport officials expected delays at immigration counters later during the day at Heathrow and other airports in Britain. There were no reports of delays at airports so far, but chief operating officer Scott Stanley at Gatwick Airport said: "Whilst passengers have so far not experienced delays at the border zones we do expect delays to occur at some point today as the rate of arriving flights increases". Passengers, who arrived on flights at Heathrow this morning, said they were through immigration formalities without any delay. Many flights from India arrive in the second half of the day, when delays are expected. The call for strike has led to Air India cancelling four flights to London scheduled for today and Jet Airways issuing advisory asking passengers travelling to the UK to rebook their flights to avoid any inconvenience. BAA, which runs Britain's airports, said last night: "At this stage, we believe that immigration queues for non-EU passengers could be contained to within two to three hours". The strike has been called by public sector employee unions against changes to pension rules and job losses. The strike is said to one of the biggest in a generation, and is expected to see over 1,000 demonstrations across Britain. Speaking from Brussels, Chancellor George Osborne told BBC: "The strike is not going to achieve anything, it's not going to change anything. It is only going to make our economy weaker and potentially cost jobs".
— PTI
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Egypt Poll
Cairo, November 30 Muslim Brotherhood, which was persecuted and banned during the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak who was ousted in February following a popular uprising, claimed that their new Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) was ahead in preliminary results. “From the start of the voting process until now, preliminary results show the Freedom and Justice party list ahead,” an FJP statement said after two days of voting for the first phase of polls which concluded yesterday. The Nour Party, comprising ultra-conservative Islamic Salafis, was giving strong competition to the FJP in the Nile Delta district Kafr el-Sheikh and Mediterranean province of Alexandria. The FJP’s strongest showing so far was in Fayoum, south of Cairo, followed by the Red Sea, Cairo and the southern city of Assiut, the statement said, adding that Nour Party was a strong competitor in Kafr el-Sheikh and Alexandria. It did not provide the figures.Liberal-secular alliance called the Egyptian Bloc was also reportedly doing well in some places. According to the Egyptian Gazette, Fayyoum governorate has recorded the highest number of votes for the FJP. Preliminary results also showed minimal votes for former members of Mubarak’s now-defunct National Democratic Party, who have joined old and new parties.
— PTI
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Hillary on historic Myanmar visit Naypyidaw, November 30 Hillary flew into a little-used airport in Naypyidaw, the remote city where Myanmar’s generals abruptly moved their capital in 2005, in a stark test of US efforts to engage the strategic but long-isolated country. Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has surprised observers with a series of reformist moves in the past year, including releasing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and nominally ending decades of military rule. President Barack Obama personally announced Clinton’s trip during a visit to Asia earlier this month, citing “flickers” of hope. But his administration has sought to keep expectations low, mindful of other false dawns in Myanmar. During a stop in South Korea for an aid conference, Hillary said the United States and other nations hoped that the flickers “will be ignited into a movement for change that will benefit the people of the country”.
— AFP
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Iran’s embassy in UK shut
London, November 30 "We have now closed the British embassy in Tehran. We have decided to evacuate all our staff and as of the last few minutes, the last of our UK-based staff have now left Iran," he said. Hague also announced that Iranian ambassadors had been summoned in countries across Europe to receive strong protests over the storming of the British embassy. Britain, locked in a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear activities, has voiced outrage over the ransacking of its diplomatic premises in Tehran on Tuesday. "If any country makes it impossible for us to operate on their soil they cannot expect to have a functioning embassy here," Hague said. He said European Union foreign ministers would discuss the embassy attack at a meeting in Brussels later on Wednesday and on Thursday.
— Reuters
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MJ’s doc gets 4 yrs in jail
Los Angeles, November 30 Giving Murray the maximum sentence yesterday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor expressed shock over the doctor's lack of remorse. Pastor said the evidence in the case showed a "continuous pattern of lies and deceit." "He has absolutely no sense of remorse, absolutely no sense of fault and is and remains dangerous," Pastor said ending the seven-week long high profile trial. Under a new state law, Murray, 58, will serve the sentence in LA County Jail rather than in a state prison. The maximum time Murray would spend in County Jail is two years under state sentencing guidelines, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the county Sheriff's Department. In a 30-minute reprimand, the judge explained why he was sentencing Murray to the maximum jail time, even though the doctor was technically eligible for probation.
— PTI
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4 Indian teens get ringside view of global green talks Kumar
suggests that rather than spend millions of dollars in “inventing”
energy-saving devices or alternative sources of energy, “a bicycle
fitted with four brooms can be used for cleaning instead of vacuum
cleaners or cleaning trucks,” while recalling a similar contraption
that he had seen recently. “If you want to do something, you have to
be innovative,” says the teenager confidently. In a fresh attempt to
trigger interest among the youth in the looming crisis involving climate
change, the Indian government has sponsored four teenagers from
different parts of the country, to attend the annual climate change
negotiations being held in Durban. After going through a rigorous
selection process of tests and essays, administered by the Centre for
Environment and Education, the 11th graders are here to observe how the
mammoth United Nations conference is conducted. “It is
overwhelming,” said Lakshay Rastogi (17) from Gurgaon. Being part of
a delegation allows them an inside peek into the nitty-gritty of the
intense diplomatic wrangling. For three days now, the four students have
watched up-close how Indian negotiators deal with a wide-range of issues
including the future of the Kyoto Protocol -- the only legally binding
treaty on climate change, which is in jeopardy. With a North-South
deadlock on how to reduce carbon emissions, there is a push for making
progress on other fronts like adaptation, technology transfer and
finance. But progress on these tracks is also painfully slow. “We
meet here at a time when greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere
have never been higher, when the number of livelihoods that have been
dissolved by climate change impacts has never been greater and when the
need for action has never been more compelling or more achievable,”
said Christian Figueres, the top UN official on climate change. Despite
dire warnings, many countries appear to be keen to push the negotiations
further down the road. It was recently announced that the 2012 talks
will be held in Qatar while outside the conference halls, activists are
staging the “Occupy Durban” movement to protest the lack of
progress. South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma in his opening address
pointed out that the island nation of Kirabati became the first country
to declare that its territory has become uninhabitable due to global
warming. “They have asked for help to evacuate the population,” Zuma
said. “Africa is more vulnerable because of poverty, which limits the
ability of most African nations to cope with the impact of climate
change,” he added. The four Indian students welcome the opportunity
to hear the view points of other countries and form their own opinions
on the disputes bogging down climate talks. “Every country has
legitimate concerns,” said Rastogi. “But I do think Western
countries need to be more understanding …they need to take the first
step and we will follow.” While she doesn’t see her future as a
crusty bureaucrat, Charu Dixit pointed out that knowledge about climate
change will be useful for a variety of professions in the coming
decades. “If I own a business or build things as an engineer, I will
think about whether I am contributing to greenhouse gases,” she
said. Shreya Bharti (16) from Jammu sees the visit as part of a larger
knowledge sharing exercise that needs to get repeated. “Now we get to
see what’s really going on far away from home,” she said. “So we
can use this information to generate awareness in schools and
neighborhoods.” During their selection process, they were asked to
comment on human-induced climate change in the context of Mahatma
Gandhi’s ideology of minimalism. Rastogi wrote about khadi that also
became a symbol of the independence movement in India and rejection of
foreign and machine-made clothing material. Being in Durban, where
Gandhi started his battle against racial discrimination, Rastogi has
been dwelling more on the test question. “There is enough for
everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed,” he summed up
with Gandhi’s famous quote.
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Thousands of UK schools and offices remained closed today as one of country's biggest public sector strikes in decades got underway here that also threatens to affect the airport passenger traffic.
Los Angeles, November 30
For 16-year-old Vineeth Udaya Kumar, from Lakshadweep, the
stalemate in the UN climate talks is a sign that individuals need to
come up with innovative ways to help arrest greenhouse gases so that the
earth’s temperature does not rise above 2 degrees Celsius.