The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Clinton to resume duties Monday following treatment for clot
- Australia braces for "catastrophic" wildfire day
- Russian Orthodox Church head urges followers to adopt children
| Clinton to resume duties Monday following treatment for clot Posted: 06 Jan 2013 07:12 PM PST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will resume her official duties on Monday, five days after being released from a hospital for treatment of a blood clot, the State Department said on Sunday. Clinton, 65, will sit down with assistant secretaries of state for a closed-door meeting on Monday at 9:15 a.m. (1415 GMT) at the start of a week-long schedule containing nearly a dozen meetings, including three at the White House.
The secretary was released from New York Presbyterian Hospital last Wednesday, after a stay of several days during which she was given blood thinners to treat the clot in a vein behind her right ear. She has been resting at home in New York since then. Clinton has suffered a series of ailments over the last month, including a stomach virus and a concussion. Her doctors have said they expect her to make a full recovery. The State Department said Clinton has been keeping up with her work by talking to her staff and receiving memos. Her first White House meeting this week will take place on Tuesday and include Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta and national security adviser Tom Donilon, the State Department said. She is also scheduled to meet with the ambassadors of Ireland and South Africa on Tuesday, and with Afghan President Hamid Karzai later in the week. Clinton is expected to step down in the next few weeks. President Barack Obama has chosen Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to succeed her. (Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Philip Barbara) Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Australia braces for "catastrophic" wildfire day Posted: 06 Jan 2013 06:49 PM PST CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia was bracing on Monday for days of "catastrophic" fire and heat wave conditions, with fires already burning in five states and as a search continued for people missing after devastating wildfires in the island state of Tasmania.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard toured fire-ravaged Tasmanian townships and promised emergency aid for survivors, who told of a "fireball" that engulfed communities across the thinly-populated state on Friday and Saturday. "The trees just exploded," local man Ashley Zanol told Australian radio, recounting a wall of flames that surrounded his truck as he carted water to assist fire crews in the hard-hit township of Murdunna, largely levelled in the inferno. Tasmanian police said around 100 people feared missing in bushfires had been accounted for and there had so far been no deaths as authorities combed through still-smouldering ruins of homes and vehicles, while evacuating local people and tourists. Bushfires were ablaze in five of Australia's six states, with 90 fires in the most populous state New South Wales, and in mountain forests around the national capital Canberra. Severe fire conditions were forecast for Tuesday, replicating those of 2009, when "Black Saturday" wildfires in Victoria state killed 173 people and caused $4.4 billion (2.7 billion pounds) worth of damage. A record heat wave, which began in Western Australia on December 27 and lasted eight days, was the fiercest in more than 80 years in that state and has spread east across the nation, making it the widest-ranging heat wave in more than a decade, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Tuesday would bring the highest "catastrophic" bushfire temperature conditions, said fire officials, under which people are advised to flee if fire threatens, as the blaze is likely to be too fierce for fire crews to easily extinguish. "Any fire that burns under the predicted conditions -- 40 degree (Celsius) temperatures (104 Fahrenheit), below 10 percent humidity, winds gusting over 70 kilometres an hour (43mph) -- those conditions are by any measure horrendous," said New South Wales Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers. In the Australian capital Canberra, hit by a firestorm in 2003 that destroyed hundreds of homes, authorities said they were expecting the worst conditions in the decade since, with a fifth day of searing temperatures and strong winds. "With those winds it boosts up the fire danger significantly," the city's deputy fire chief Michael Joyce told local reporters. Blazes sparked by weekend lightning storms were already burning in forests surrounding the sprawling lake-and-bushland city, as they did 10 years earlier. CLIMATE CHANGE Australia, the world's driest inhabited continent, is particularly vulnerable to bushfires, fuelled each summer by extreme heat and by what climate scientists say is creeping climate shift blamed for hotter average temperatures globally. Authorities warned earlier in the Australian summer that much of the country faced extreme fire conditions this season, after several years of cooler conditions that had aided forest growth, but also created tinder dry fire fuel conditions. Gillard warned all Australians to be alert as temperatures soared in coming days. "We live in a country that is hot and dry, and where we sustain very destructive fires periodically, so there is always going to be risk," she told reporters. "We do know over time that as a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events and conditions." Australia is the world's second largest wheat exporter, but it's wheat harvest was not expected to be affected by the fires and hot weather, as the vast majority of this season's winter crop had already been harvested, analysts said. "In respect to the summer crop, the sunflowers, sorghum for example, the weather will have an impact, particularly in northern New South Wales where they had low soil moisture coming into the season," said Andrew Woodhouse, grains analyst at Advance Trading Australasia. GrainCorp, Australia's largest listed agricultural company, said the planting window for crops like sorghum closes in mid-February, which would allow farmers to delay seeding until conditions improve. "Farmers will be looking for rain for sure, but we will have to wait and see what happens," said GrainCorp spokesman Angus Trigg. (Additional reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Michael Perry) Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Russian Orthodox Church head urges followers to adopt children Posted: 06 Jan 2013 04:29 PM PST MOSCOW (Reuters) - The head of Russia's dominant church urged its citizens to adopt children, speaking in a Russian Orthodox Christmas address on Monday after President Vladimir Putin signed a controversial law barring Americans from adopting Russian children.
Patriarch Kirill paid particular attention to the issue in a Christmas message, lending support to Putin's promises - issued along with a law that outraged liberals and child rights activists - that Russia will take care of its own. "It is very important for our people to adopt orphans into their families, with joy and a special sense of gratitude to God, giving them not only shelter and an upbringing but also giving them their love," the Russian Orthodox Church head said. The ban on American adoptions is part of a law Putin signed on December 28 in retaliation for U.S. legislation designed to punish Russian human rights violators, which the Kremlin chief said is poisoning relations. Critics of the Russian legislation say Putin has held the welfare of children trapped in a crowded and troubled orphanage system hostage to political manoeuvring, reducing their chances of finding loving homes or adequate medical care. The numbers of adoptions by Russian families are modest, with some 7,400 adoptions in 2011 compared with 3,400 adoptions of Russian children by families abroad - nearly 1,000 of those by Americans. In signing the legislation, Putin echoed Russian lawmakers' arguments that American parents who have been accused of abusing their adopted Russian-born children have been treated too leniently by U.S. courts and law enforcement. He also signed a decree ordering improvements in the care for orphaned Russian children and appealed to patriotism, suggesting that Russians have an obligation to care for the country's disadvantaged children. Kirill added a religious element to that message, saying that "the Lord tells His followers that if they want to reach the Kingdom of God they must ... share their opportunities with the needy - primarily invalids, the elderly, and children." "'Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them,' says the Lord. These words from Him should ... make us all realize how important children are in the eyes of God," he said. "And as we celebrate Christmas I would like to appeal to everyone with a request: If you can take this important step in life aimed at adopting children, supporting orphans, take this step," Kirill said. "There should be no orphans in our country." More than 650,000 children are considered orphans in Russia, including those rejected by their living parents or taken from dysfunctional homes. Of that total, 110,000 lived in state institutions in 2011, according to government figures. More than three-quarters of Russians consider themselves Russian Orthodox, but far fewer attend church regularly despite a resurgence of religion following the demise of the communist Soviet Union. The Russian Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar and celebrates Christmas on January 7. Kirill's midnight service at Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral was shown live on state television, which also showed Putin - a former KGB officer who has cultivated close ties with the church - attending a service in the southern city of Sochi. Copyright © 2013 Reuters |
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