The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Riot police fire teargas to disperse protesters in China
- Egypt activists call mass rally against army rule
- Quakes rattle NZ's tremor-plagued Christchurch
| Riot police fire teargas to disperse protesters in China Posted: 22 Dec 2011 08:04 PM PST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese riot police fired teargas to disperse a throng of protesters in a small town in southern China on Friday, the fourth day of demonstrations against the construction of a power station. Footage from Hong Kong's Cable TV showed police firing several rounds of teargas in Haimen town, in the southern boom province of Guangdong, sending hundreds of people scuttling away.
The protests in Haimen intensified this week just as people about 130 km further along the coast, in Wukan village, called off a 10-day blockade of their village in a protest against what they said was a land grab by officials. Protests in China have become relatively common over issues such as corruption, pollution, wages, and land grabs that local-level officials justify in the name of development. Chinese experts put the number of "mass incidents," as such protests are known, at about 90,000 a year in recent years. While Communist Party rule is not directly threatened by such incidents of unrest, officials fear they could coalesce into broader, more organised challenges to their power. Residents of Haimen, a coastal town of about 120,000 people, took to the streets on Tuesday to protest against plans to build a coal-fired power plant after what they complain has been years of heavy air and water pollution from existing power plants in the town. They rejected an offer to suspend the project late on Wednesday, demanding it be scrapped altogether, and Hong Kong's Mingpao newspaper reported on Friday that they pledged to keep up their action if police did not release detained protesters. China's state news agency Xinhua had reported that police had detained five people for vandalism on Wednesday evening. People in China are increasingly unwilling to accept the relentless speed of urbanisation and industrialisation and the impact on the environment and health. (Reporting By Sisi Tang; Writing by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Robert Birsel) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Egypt activists call mass rally against army rule Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:22 PM PST CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian activists have called a mass rally in Cairo on Friday against the army's handling of protests that killed 17 people and drew international criticism of the ruling generals.
Protesters who fought soldiers and police in the capital for five days until calm was restored this week want the ruling military council to cede power more swiftly than planned. Some Egyptians, sceptical of the military's avowed commitment to democratic change, want a presidential vote as early as January 25, the first anniversary of the start of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak, or at least much earlier than the mid-2012 handover now scheduled. Students have called for Egyptians to join Friday's protest with a march from Cairo's Ain Shams university, two of whose students were among the 17 killed. Those two deaths prompted sit-ins on Ain Shams campus, in front of the Defence Ministry and at other universities. "The current predicament we have reached is a result of the army council's reluctance to play its role, its intentional foot-dragging, breaking its obligations and failing over the economy and security, putting the whole country on the edge of a huge crisis," said a statement signed by two dozen parties, youth movements and others calling for Friday's protest. The April 6 movement, which played a lead role in galvanising Egyptians to rise up against Mubarak, said the army's handling of the latest street protests showed it was seeking to "protect the previous regime." BROTHERHOOD PARTY STAYS OFF STREETS The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), leading in Egypt's staggered parliamentary election and wary of derailing the vote that will secure its place in mainstream politics, said it would not join in. The ultraconservative Salafist al-Nour Party said on its Facebook page however that it would take part. Many activists accuse the Brotherhood and other Islamists of betraying the protest movement in order to secure their own positions in the emerging new power structure. The FJP said on its Facebook page it would not participate although it said it was "the right of the Egyptian people to protest and demonstrate peacefully." "The party emphasises the need for the handover of power to civilians according to the will of the Egyptian people through free and fair elections ... in a stable environment," said Mohamed al-Katatni, a senior member of the FJP. The comments indicated the Brotherhood was sticking to the army's timetable to hold a presidential vote in June. The Brotherhood has said bringing the vote forward could "create chaos." The Brotherhood may want to shape the new constitution before a presidential poll, seeking greater powers for parliament and avoiding giving the president too many powers, analysts say. They add that an earlier presidential election would not necessarily eliminate the military's dominance in a new civilian-governed state. The military has survived Egypt's political upheaval intact and has vast economic and other interests, so any new president would need its support to maintain order. "This is a transitional period where one party hands power to another. A deal must be struck. This is politics," a source close to the military said. (Editing by Andrew Roche)
Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Quakes rattle NZ's tremor-plagued Christchurch Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:18 PM PST WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A series of strong earthquakes hit the New Zealand city of Christchurch on Friday, sending goods toppling from shelves, causing rockfalls and driving terrified residents from buildings 10 months after a quake killed almost 200 people in the city.
Christchurch police said there were no reports of casualties or widespread damage, although one person had been reported hurt at a shopping mall and taken to hospital. An initial 5.8 magnitude earthquake was centred 20 km northeast of the city at a very shallow depth of 8 km, according to New Zealand's civil defence. It was followed by a series of strong aftershocks, one of a 5.3 magnitude but no tsunami warning was issued. The tremors struck as shoppers thronged malls in the lead-up to Christmas and prompted many residents to flee the city, clogging roads. "It was incredibly violent," one caller told Radio New Zealand. "All the water in my birdbath slopped out and I could hear everything falling over inside. When I walked inside, the cat streaked out the door, ornaments were all over the floor, contents of the pantry were lying on the floor, a little bit of smashed glass and picture frames lying over." Christchurch, the largest city in New Zealand's South Island, is still recovering from a quake measuring 6.3 which killed 182 people in February and caused up to NZ$20 billion (9.8 billion pounds) in damage. A strong but less damaging quake struck Christchurch in September last year. POWER CUT, AIRPORT SHUT Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said the series of shakes had shattered the nerves of people who had been slowly getting their lives back to normal. "It has been a long hard road, 15 months ... and people had dared to hope that the aftershocks were over," said Parker. "I think there will be more damage to buildings, nothing significant, no major collapses just little bits of more debris." "It's terrible timing, you can't underestimate the impact of this on people on the psychological level, they've been exposed to so much and it felt like it was getting better, and it just puts the work back, the repairs back, the rebuild back." Ambulance services said they treated 18 people for panic attacks and anxiety. Large areas of Christchurch's central business district are still off-limits after the February quake, which toppled the city's famous cathedral, as well as shops, homes and office buildings. About 6,000 homes in the city were condemned after the February quake. The latest quake caused some large rock falls in the hills around the city but none had fallen onto houses or roads around the nearby port town of Lyttelton which was extensively damaged in the February quake. "There's not a heck of a lot of buildings left to wreck, to bring down in an earthquake, to be perfectly honest," said the town's chief fire officer, Mark Buckley. Four people had to be rescued after becoming trapped at a beach by a rockfall, police reported. Two buildings damaged in the previous quakes had collapsed, they added. Aerial footage showed clouds of dust rising from seaside suburbs under sunny summer skies. The region's main power supplier said up to 15,000 customers were without power, mostly after circuit breakers were tripped. Christchurch International Airport was evacuated as a precautionary measure while the terminal and runways were checked. The New Zealand dollar briefly dipped to $0.7725 from $0.7740 in thin trading after news of the quake, before recovering. New Zealand stocks cut pared gains to trade up 0.14 percent. New Zealand straddles the boundaries of the Indo-Australian and the Pacific tectonic plates and is hit by about 14,000 quakes every year, of which only a small number usually top a magnitude of 5. Scientists had warned after the February quake that there would be further shakes, probably as large as magnitude 6. "In coming days the most likely scenario is that there'll be a series of aftershocks in a similar location and they'll gradually drop off," Ken Gledhill a seismologist with GNS Science told TVNZ. "This is just a reminder that this area is more active than it was in September 2010." ($1 = 1.2914 New Zealand dollars) (Additional reporting by Gyles Beckford; Editing by Robert Birsel) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Star Online: World Updates To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan