South Africa: City workers end weeklong strike
ohannesburg: Labor leaders in South Africa say a strike by municipal worker is over.
Mthandeki Nhlapo, general secretary of the 150,000-member South African Municipal Workers' Union, said on Friday that garbage collectors, zoo keepers, bus drivers and other city workers would be back on the job on Monday.
The union accepted a 13 per cent wage increase after initially demanding 15 per cent. Nhlapo said the increase and provisions such as improved housing allowances are "a significant victory."
The workers have held marches since going on strike on Monday, at times littering streets, looting shops and threatening non-strikers.
The disruption in city services had led volunteers to pitch in at Johannesburg's zoo, sweeping out enclosures and chopping fruits and vegetables for animals' meals.
UN: Sharp rise in Afghan deaths
The civilian death toll in Afghanistan has risen by 24 per cent this year, the United Nations has said.
In a new report released on Friday, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) blamed bombings by the Taliban and air raids by international forces for the majority of the killings.
The report said that 1,013 civilians were killed on the sidelines of their country's armed conflict from January to the end of June, compared to 818 in the first half of 2008 and 684 in the same period in 2007.
Commenting on the report, Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said it was critical that steps be taken to shield Afghan communities from fighting.
"All parties involved in this conflict should take all measures to protect civilians, and to ensure the independent investigation of all civilian casualties, as well as justice and remedies for the victims," Pillay said.
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James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Afghanistan, said: "This new report will be deeply controversial here. For many Afghans, this is a key political issue.
"The line that's coming from the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and the US and their new commander here, General [Stanley] McChrystal, is that the success of their mission is not about killing Taliban, it's about the number of Afghans who feel they are being protected."
Erica Gaston, from the Open Society Institute in Afghanistan, agreed and told Al Jazeera that "civilian casualty losses colour Afghan impressions of international forces and the Afghan government".
"Afghan people want protection and they want stability and if the international forces and Afghan government can't deliver that, then they will turn to other political leaders," she said.
Grim assessment
In its grim assessment of the first half of 2009, the UNAMA said the Taliban and other anti-government fighters have become more deadly by shifting from ambush attacks to suicide bombings, roadside explosives and targeted assassinations.
It warned that more civilians would likely be killed as anti-government fighters try to battle a troop increase by the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, and seek to destabilise the country before presidential and provincial council elections on August 20.
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Attacks on government and international forces are "frequently undertaken regardless of the impact on civilians in terms of deaths and injuries, or destruction of civilian infrastructure," the 21-page report said.
The US and Western powers have also become more deadly, partly because anti-government fighter groups are taking cover in residential areas or luring US-led forces into unintentionally killing civilians, the report said.
The Taliban and others are "basing themselves in civilian areas so as to deliberately blur the distinction between combatants and civilians, and as part of what appears to be an active policy aimed at drawing a military response to areas where there is a high likelihood that civilians will be killed or injured".
The report said international forces have given high priority to minimising civilian casualties, but along with Afghan forces have killed 310 civilians.
Space shuttle lands in Florida
The US space shuttle Endeavour landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this afternoon after a successful mission to the International Space Station.
The shuttle and its seven-member crew left orbit for the Florida landing after a 16-day mission to complete Japan's International Space Station laboratory.
Endeavour spent 11 days at the orbiting outpost, where astronauts installed the final segment of Japan's $2.4 billion Kibo laboratory.
Flying 200 miles (320 km) over the Indian Ocean, commander Mark Polansky and pilot Douglas Hurley fired Endeavour's twin braking rockets at 9.41am EDT (1341 GMT) to slow the ship and begin an hour-long glide through the atmosphere.
During an 11-day stay at the station, Endeavour's crew installed a Japanese-built platform for telescopes and other science experiments. They also delivered spare parts and replaced batteries to keep the solar-powered station running during night-time passes around Earth.
Nasa is stocking the $100 billion station, a project of 16 nations, in preparation for the shuttle fleet's retirement next year after seven more missions.
Using a Japanese-built robot arm for the first time, astronauts placed three devices on the new platform: an X-ray telescope, a monitor to measure electromagnetic fields around the station and a communications antenna for a Japanese satellite network.
One of the Endeavour astronauts, rookie Timothy Kopra, remained behind on the space station, taking over the flight engineer's post previously held by Japan's Koichi Wakata, who returns home aboard the shuttle after 4 1/2 months in orbit.
Musharraf emergency 'unlawful'
Pakistan's Supreme court has ruled that emergency rule enforced by former President Pervez Musharraf was unconstitutional and illegal.
The order clears the way for him to be tried for treason because under the constitution, anyone found guilty of abrogating it can be prosecuted.
The court ruling also said that the appointment of judges after the emergency was illegal.
However, the order will not affect the position of President Asif Ali Zardari.
It said that questions over the constitutional legitimacy of his appointment should be "exempted".
The court ruled that if this matter was brought before it, there was a danger Pakistan could be plunged into another constitutional crisis.
But the ruling does mean that those judges who were appointed after the emergency was imposed could lose their jobs.
Wall Street rises on mixed GDP report
NEW YORK: US stocks rose Friday as the market digested a government report on second-quarter US output that showed a smaller contraction than
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expected but weakness in consumer spending.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 43.23 points (0.47%) to 9,197.69 at 1457 GMT, as the market extended gains from a rally Thursday.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite gained 9.70 points (0.49%) to 1,994.00 and the Standard & Poor's 500 broad-market index advanced 3.48 points (0.35%) to 990.23.
The Commerce Department reported before the market open that the world's biggest economy had narrowed its contraction to an annualized rate of 1.0% in the second quarter.
The average analyst forecast was for a sharper 1.5% contraction in the department's first estimate for the April-June quarter gross domestic product.
"It seems that this less-bad nominal report is not doing anything for stocks," said Jon Ogg at 24/7WallSt.com.
Despite the slower pace of contraction, after a revised 6.4% decline in the first quarter, the Street reaction "was one of disappointment," said Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com.
"This disappointment was a reminder that the economic recovery will be an uneven affair, quite simply because the US consumer isn't what he/she used to be in the face of rising unemployment and falling home values," O'Hare said.
Government spending was a main driver of the expansion but consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of economic activity, fell 1.2% after a rise of 0.6% in the first quarter.
Jennifer Lee, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, was upbeat on what she said was the largest improvement in the economy since 2000.
"The results set the stage for a positive read on the GDP in the third quarter, which means that the recession will likely be wrapped up in the July-to-September period," Lee said.
Bomb attacks put resorts on high alert
PALMA DE MALLORCA - Spain's security forces were on maximum alert Friday for the 50th anniversary of the armed Basque group ETA, blamed for bombings that killed two police officers and injured scores of people this week.
ETA was founded on July 31, 1959, and has killed more than 825 people since beginning its violent campaign for an independent Basque state in 1968.
Authorities blame ETA for two attacks this week - an explosion that killed two officers near a police barracks on Mallorca island on Thursday and a car bomb that injured more than 60 people in the northern city of Burgos on Wednesday.
If confirmed as ETA attacks, the blasts would conflict with government assertions that the group is seriously weakened after major police crackdowns in Spain and France in recent years.
Their timing, two days before the milestone anniversary, may be part of an ETA effort to demonstrate it is in no danger of breaking up.
"The government has given orders to the security forces to be on maximum alert, to double their work, to increase even more their efforts and to protect themselves from these vile murderers," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said late Thursday.
Black cop at Gates home regrets ‘Uncle Tom’ label
CAMBRIDGE — A black sergeant who was at the home of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. when he was arrested says he’s been maligned as an "Uncle Tom" for supporting the actions of the white arresting officer.
Cambridge Sgt. Leon Lashley gave a letter to Sgt. James Crowley to give to President Barack Obama during their so-called "beer summit" with Gates on Thursday night at the White House.
In the letter, which was also sent to CNN, Lashley says Gates "may have caused grave and potentially irreparable harm to the struggle for racial harmony."
Lashley says he has become known as a traitor to his heritage by some because he "spoke the truth" about the arrest.
Gates was charged with disorderly conduct by police investigating a burglary. The charge was later dropped.
Vatican protests as Italy approves use of abortion pill
• Users will excommunicate themselves, officials say
• Berlusconi government quiet on sexual ethics
The Vatican and Catholic politicians today reacted with dismay to a decision by Italy's drugs agency to approve limited use of the abortion pill Mifepristone, which has been available in much of the rest of Europe since the 1990s.
Senior Vatican officials said women who took the pill would be excommunicating themselves, as would doctors who prescribed it and nurses who administered it. Because of the high proportion of conscientious objectors to abortion in the Italian health service – some 70% – it is likely that use of the pill will be circumscribed.
After a reportedly heated four-hour session that ended late on Thursday, the board of the Italian pharmaceuticals agency, AIFA, voted by four to one to approve Mifepristone. But it stipulated that the pill should only be administered in hospital during the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
Also known as RU-486, Mifepristone had already been in use in some Italian regions on a trial basis.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head of the pope's thinktank on bioethical issues, the Pontifical Academy for Life, said: "The fact of taking a pill may be less traumatic for a woman, but it does not change the substance. It is still abortion."
He added that the consequences for a Catholic – automatic excommunication – were "the same as those for surgical abortion". To the continuing dismay of the Vatican, abortion has been available on demand in Italy since 1978, though usually only in the first 90 days of pregnancy.
For Silvio Berlusconi's government and its supporters, this was a delicate moment for any announcement bearing on sexual ethics. Recordings purportedly made by a prostitute who claims that she spent the night with Italy's 72-year-old married prime minister have focused public attention on his own apparently wide-ranging sex life. In one, a businessman who allegedly supplied women for parties at Berlusconi's home can be heard warning one of them that the prime minister never uses a condom.
Berlusconi had no immediate comment to make on the agency's decision. The reaction of other Italian politicians cut across party boundaries, though most of the censure came from the right, dominated by the governing Freedom People movement (PdL).
A spokeswoman for Rome's formerly neo-fascist mayor, Gianni Alemanno, a leading member of the PdL, said: "Infanticide is, in fact, being legalised for the modest sum of €14 a tablet." But a minister in Berlusconi's cabinet, Stefania Prestigiacomo, said she endorsed the use of Mifepristone "under control in a hospital".
Livia Turco, health minister in the previous, centre-left government when the trials began two years ago, said the drug had been subjected to a "rigorous investigative process during which the medical aspects and the compatibility of [Mifepristone] with Italian legislation were scrupulously evaluated". But Paola Binetti, a member of the same party, sharply criticised the approval of what she termed "do-it-yourself abortion".
Mifepristone has other medical uses and can be used as an emergency contraceptive if taken after sex but before ovulation. Its active compound was discovered by French researchers in 1980. The drug is marketed in the United States as Mifeprex and in the rest of the world as Mifegyne. The drug is not legal in Ireland or Poland.
No Apologies From the Boss of a No-Frills Airline
LONDON
MICHAEL O’LEARY, chief executive of the European budget airline Ryanair, was discussing his new scheme to charge passengers to go to the bathroom.
Most passengers — the “discretionary toilet visitors,” as he calls them — would eventually forgo in-flight bathroom use altogether, he predicted. Which is good, because he would also like to reduce the number of bathrooms per plane, to one.
What if the plane was stricken by some nasty effluent illness, like food poisoning?
A snorting noise wafted over from the chair where Mr. O’Leary was sitting. “We don’t serve enough food for everybody to get food poisoning,” he said.
At 48, the quick-talking, blue jean-wearing Mr. O’Leary is one of the most successful businessmen in Ireland, presiding over an airline that is, remarkably, flourishing in a brutal climate for airlines (and most other businesses). He is known for thick-skinned aggression, outrageous public statements and an implacable belief that short-haul airline passengers will endure nearly every imaginable indignity, as long as the tickets are cheap and the planes are on time.
“Soon he’ll be charging us for oxygen and number of limbs,” the Sun newspaper groused in June, when Mr. O’Leary unveiled his latest proposal — getting people to carry their own bags to the plane.
Mr. O’Leary revels in his persona as national pugilist and provocateur, alternately charming and offending.
He once dressed as the pope to advertise Ryanair’s new route from Dublin to Rome. He has declared that fat people should pay more for their seats, but that it would take too long to weigh them at the airport. And, at a news conference to discuss the possibility of starting trans-Atlantic flights, he suggested — to the consternation of the young woman gamely translating his remarks into German — that business-class customers would receive free oral sex. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfIY24BErBE
Mr. O’Leary might sometimes seem like a stand-up comedian throwing out insane suggestions for their shock value. In private, he is known as a tough negotiator whose canny timing, draconian demands and sharp elbows helps him extract favorable deals, as when he put in a huge order for new planes when the market had collapsed, after Sept. 11.
His avowed enemies include unions (his workers are not unionized), politicians who impose airport taxes, environmentalists, bloggers who rant about poor service, travel agents, reporters who expect free seats, regulators who thwart his plans and airport owners like BAA, whom he once called “overcharging rapists.”
There is method in all this, it seems. Insulting, or, “slagging off,” as they say here, “the BAA and the British government and the rest is all designed to send strong signals to everyone who deals with Ryanair that you’re not going to get away with anything,” said Joe Gill, director of equity research at Bloxham Stockbrokers in Dublin.
Ryanair flies more than 850 routes across Europe, often to obscure airports far away from big cities — “from nowhwere to nowhere,” in the scoffing words of Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who runs the competing airline EasyJet. Ryanair’s post-tax profits fell by 78 percent in the year ending this March, but it still made a 105 million euros in profit. While most carriers are hemorrhaging passengers, Ryanair expects its passenger numbers to increase, to 68 million this year from 57 million in 2008.
The mystery is why so many people are willing to put up with an airline that, in the words of The Economist, “has become a byword for appalling customer service, misleading advertising claims and jeering rudeness towards anyone or anything that gets in its way.”
“Nobody helps you — it’s as simple as that,” said Malcolm Ginsberg, editor in chief of the travel newsletter aerbt.co.uk, describing what happens to Ryanair passengers who need assistance at the airport.
That is not the point, Mr. O’Leary said in a recent interview. “Our customer service is unlike every other airline, which has this image of, ‘We want to fall down at your feet and you can walk all over us and the customer is always right’ and all that nonsense.”
He was sitting in a café at the chamber of commerce here, drinking coffee. Soon, he would hold a news conference where, among other things, he would call Prime Minister Gordon Brown a “twit” and a “Scottish miser.”
By contrast, Mr. O’Leary continued, Ryanair promises four things: low fares, a good on-time record, few cancellations, and few lost bags.
“But if you want anything more — go away! Will we put you in a hotel room if your flight was canceled?” Mr. O’Leary asked rhetorically. “No! Go away.”
He began riffing on the theme of when Ryanair grants refunds, which is never.
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