Egypt wakes to devastation, Mubarak refuses to quit

Mubarak addresses the nation on Egyptian state TV in Cairo yesterday, January 28, 2011 where he called for dialogue and said he would name a new government today.





President Hosni Mubarak clung to power in Egypt today after days of popular protests against his 30-year-old rule in which at least 24 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded.

Mubarak refused to bow to protesters’ demands that he quit and ordered troops and tanks into cities overnight in an attempt to quell demonstrations that left a trail wreckage across Cairo.

The ruling party’s headquarters were still burning this morning and demonstrators were still out in the streets in the early hours in defiance of a curfew. Daybreak revealed ransacked shops and burnt-out buildings.

Mubarak promised to appoint a new Cabinet today and called for dialogue to avert chaos.

Medical sources said at least 24 people had been killed and more than 1,000 wounded in yesterday’s clashes in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria.

“It is not by setting fire and by attacking private and public property that we achieve the aspirations of Egypt and its sons, but they will be achieved through dialogue, awareness and effort,” the president said in a midnight TV address, his first public appearance since the protests began four days ago.



The unprecedented unrest has sent shock waves through the Middle East, where other autocratic rulers may face similar challenges, and unsettled global financial markets yesterday.

US President Barack Obama said he spoke to Mubarak and urged “concrete steps that advance the rights of the Egyptian people”.

The protests bore many hallmarks of the unrest that toppled the leader of Tunisia two weeks ago, although the arrival of army troops to back up the police showed that Mubarak still has support of the military, the country’s most powerful force.

Protesters mocked his decision to sack his Cabinet as an empty gesture.

“It was never about the government, by God. It is you (Mubarak) who has to go! What you have done to the people is enough!” said one.

“The people want the president to fall,” dozens of youths chanted to a Reuters TV camera in the early morning in Tahrir square in central Cairo.

Some youths held up empty shotgun cartridges, teargas canisters and unused live rounds.

Tanks stood on roads leading into the square. One army armoured personnel carrier was gutted by fire. The square was strewn with rubble, burned tyres and charred wood that had been used as barricades overnight.

The army’s arrival had initially been welcomed by crowds, frustrated by heavy-handed police. But the damage to army vehicles showed that this swiftly wore off and protesters overnight accused the army of taking the same police line.

“What happened was a betrayal of the people... We were celebrating the army’s presence when they got to Tahrir, we let them through to take over from the dirty riot police and then we got fired at again,” Marzouq, a protester, in his 20s, said.

Cars began returning to the streets and there were other signs of normal life resuming but the wreckage was widespread.

In central Cairo, a petrol station was smashed and the burnt-out shells of three cars lay on the street nearby. Elsewhere, police trucks and pick-ups still smouldered in the acrid air, filled with the smell of smoke and teargas.

The ruling party headquarters in Cairo, set ablaze yesterday, was still burning.

In Cairo’s Mohandiseen district, jewellery shops were ransacked and emptied. A Reuters team saw a gang of looters storm into a bank and carry out the safe overnight.

More than half of the dead in yesterday’s clashes were reported in Suez, the eastern city which was a focus of the most violent protests over the past four days.

Some Egyptians expressed fear that more unrest would leave their country in ruins, and hoped Mubarak would go quickly.

“We don’t want this regime to leave this country in a state of destruction. We want it to go away. We need to give them a safe haven to leave this nation. Leave us, enough,” Salah Abdel Maqsoud, a senior official in the Journalists Union close to the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, told Al Jazeera television.

Mubarak, 82, has been a close ally of Washington and beneficiary of US aid for decades, justifying his autocratic rule in part by citing a danger of Islamist militancy.

The Muslim Brotherhood opposition, however, appears to have played a backseat role in the unrest.

His government has largely shut Egypt off from the Internet, which protesters used to organise. The mobile phone network in Cairo was still out of action. Obama called for an end to interference with communications networks.

“I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters,” Obama said.

Anthony Skinner, associate director of political risk consultancy Maplecroft, said Mubarak’s conduct was reminiscent of that of Tunisia’s ousted leader Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who also fired his Cabinet hours before he was forced to flee.

“Mubarak is showing he is still there for now and he is trying to deflect some of the force of the process away from himself by sacking the Cabinet. We will have to see how people react but I don’t think it will be enough at all.”

Markets were hit by the uncertainty. US stocks suffered their biggest one-day loss in nearly six months, crude oil prices surged and the dollar and US Treasury debt gained as investors looked to safe havens.

Egyptian president Mubarak names his deputy and new PM - widespread violent protests.

Protests continue as Egyptian president appoints former spy chief as his vice-president for the first time. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has appointed the country's head of intelligence to the post of vice-president, in a move said to be a reaction ...

New clashes erupt as Egyptians spurn Mubarak speech

A man walks by the burning building of the ruling National Democratic party in Cairo today, January 29, 2011.

Thousands of anti-government protesters clashed with police in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria today after President Hosni Mubarak spurned demands that he end his 30-year authoritarian rule.

A Reuters witness said police used teargas and live ammunition against demonstrators in Alexandria. Protesters also gathered on a main square in the capital Cairo in defiance of military orders for them to disperse.

The fresh unrest broke out as Mubarak clung to power, replacing his Cabinet in an effort to appease angry Egyptians, complaining about poverty, corruption and unemployment.

The president ordered troops and tanks into Cairo and other cities overnight and imposed a curfew in an attempt to quell the protests that have shaken the Arab world’s most populous nation, a key US ally, to the core.






Despite dozens of deaths in clashes yesterday, Egyptians said they would press on with protests until Mubarak quits.

“We are not demanding a change of Cabinet, we want them all to leave, Mubarak before anyone else,” said Saad Mohammed, a 45-year-old welder who was among about 2,000 people gathered in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square.

The unrest, which follows the overthrow of Tunisian strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali two weeks ago in a popular uprising, has sent shock waves through the Middle East, where other autocratic rulers may face similar challenges.

The capital was strewn with wreckage from a day of protests yesterday when protesters fought running battles with police firing rubber bullets, teargas and wielding batons — an unprecedented turn of events in the tightly-controlled country.

Government buildings, including the ruling party headquarters, still blazed this morning after being set alight by demonstrators who targeted symbols of Mubarak’s rule.

According to a Reuters tally, at least 74 people have been killed in the unrest. There was no official figure. Medical sources said at least 1,030 people were injured in Cairo, but with more protests starting throughout the country, the number was bound to rise.

As well as Cairo and Alexandria, clashes have also occurred in Suez, site of the strategically important canal.

The demonstrators, many of them young urban poor and students, complain of repression, corruption, and economic despair under Mubarak, who has held power since the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat by Islamist soldiers.

Mubarak, whose government still rules with emergency laws, promised to address Egyptians’ grievances in a television address last night. He sacked the Cabinet but made clear he intended to stay in power and he condemned the violence.

The Cabinet was meeting today to formalise the move.

So far, the protest movement seems to have no clear leader or organisation even if Mubarak did wish to open a dialogue.

Prominent activist Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Laureate for his work with the UN nuclear agency, returned to Egypt from Europe to join the protests. But many Egyptians feel he has not spent enough time in the country.

In an interview with France 24 television, El Baradei said Mubarak should step down and begin a transition of power.

“There is a consensus in Egypt in every part of society that this is a regime that is a dictatorship, that has failed to deliver on economic, social, and political fronts,” he said. “We need a new beginning.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist opposition group, has also stayed in the background, although several of its senior officials have been rounded up. The government has accused it of planning to exploit the protests.

The deployment of army troops to back up the police showed that Mubarak still has the support of the military, the country’s most powerful force. But any change of sentiment among the generals could seal his fate.

The army told Egyptians today not to gather in groups and to observe the curfew, which was extended by two hours to begin at 4pm (1400 GMT).

Tanks were parked on roads leading into Tahrir Square, which was strewn with rubble, burned tyres and charred wood that had been used as barricades overnight.

The number of protesters was fewer than in previous days but they were nonetheless defiant.

“This is unacceptable, Mubarak must step down. Public unrest will not stop until this is achieved,” said Mohammed Essawy, a 26-year-old graduate student.

Protesters mocked Mubarak’s sacking of his Cabinet as an empty gesture.

Mahmoud Mohammed Imam, a 26-year-old taxi-driver, said: “All he said was empty promises and lies. He appointed a new government of thieves, one thief goes and one thief comes to loot the country.”

“This is the revolution of the people who are hungry, this is the revolution of the people who have no money against those with a lot of money.”

The final straw appeared to be the prospect of elections due to be held in September. Until now few had doubted that Mubarak would remain in control or bring in a successor in the shape of his 47-year-old son Gamal.

It also poses a dilemma for the United States. Mubarak, 82, has been a close ally of Washington and beneficiary of US aid for decades, justifying his autocratic rule in part by citing a danger of Islamist militancy.

Egypt plays an important role in Middle East peacemaking and was the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

US President Barack Obama said he had spoken to Mubarak shortly after his speech yesterday and urged him to make good on his promises of reform.

“I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters,” Obama said. US officials made clear that US$1.5 billion (RM4.6 billion) in aid was at stake.

Anthony Skinner of political risk consultancy Maplecroft said Mubarak’s conduct was reminiscent of that of Tunisia’s Ben Ali, who fired his Cabinet hours before he was forced to flee.

“Mubarak is showing he is still there for now and he is trying to deflect some of the force of the process away from himself by sacking the Cabinet. We will have to see how people react but I don’t think it will be enough at all.”

Australia floods cover area size of France/Germany

Clash of nature: A boat fighting for attention with a street light post in Bundaberg, today December 31, 2010.

Fishing could be fun for Jim Casey and wife Lesley from their house in Chinchilla, Queensland, December 28, 2010, were the consequences not so potentially devastating.

Flood waters rose across Australia’s northeast today, covering an area bigger than France and Germany combined, inundating 22 towns and stranding 200,000 people, and closing one of the country’s major sugar export ports.

Flooding has already shut major coal mines in Queensland state and its biggest coal export port, forcing a long list of miners such as Anglo American and Rio Tinto to slow or halt operations.

The worst flooding in about 50 years has been caused by a La Nina weather pattern that has resulted in torrential rain over the past two weeks across northeast Australia.

“This disaster is a long way from over,” Queensland state premier Anna Bligh told reporters today.

“We now have 22 towns or cities that are either substantially flooded or isolated. That represents some 200,000 people spanning an area that’s bigger than the size of France and Germany combined.”

Prime Minister Julia Gillard toured the flood-hit sugar city of Bundaberg, which closed its port today after flood debris was washed downstream into shipping channels and damaged navigation beacons.

“This is a natural disaster across Queensland,” said Gillard in announcing a A$1 million (RM3.1 million) government contribution to a flood aid appeal that now totals A$6 million.

Shipments of sugar from Australia, one the world’s leading exporters of the sweetener, have been disrupted because of the closure of Bundaberg’s port. The port normally ships about 400,000 tonnes of raw sugar a year, with three 30,000-tonne vessels due to arrive in the next few days.



“If the port is closed for only a few days it won’t be a big issue but any extended delay would cause some concern,” said Brian Mahoney, an executive with Marybrough Sugar Factory Ltd, which ships through Bundaberg.

The inland sea that now stretches across Queensland is dotted with the roofs of flooded homes, islands of dry ground crowded with stranded livestock, and small boats ferrying people and emergency supplies.

Bundaberg resident Sandy Kiddle hugged Gillard as she told of the heartbreak of seeing her house flooded.

“It was just a sea of water and I thought the beach would never come to our house,” Kiddle told Gillard from the evacuation centre she now calls home.

Australia has recorded its wettest spring on record, said the nation’s weather bureau, causing six major river systems in Queensland state to flood. Several rivers in New South Wales state have also caused flood damaging the nation’s wheat crop.

Possibly as much as half the Australian wheat crop or about 10 million tonnes has been downgraded to less than milling quality because of rain damage, tightening global supplies and contributing to prices for the grain rising about 45 per cent this year, the biggest surge since 2007.

The floods have also pushed coking coal and thermal prices sharply higher, and tight markets are keeping a close eye on further disruptions. Queensland’s ports have an annual coal export capacity of 225 million tonnes.

Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coking coal used to make steel, and accounts for about two-thirds of global trade. It is also the second-biggest exporter of thermal coal used for power generation.

Emergency authorities in Queensland said the flooding was not expected to reach a peak in some areas until Sunday, and would not recede for at least a week.

Authorities are warning of rising health risks from floodwaters in Queensland, along with the danger of crocodiles and snakes in flooded homes.

New Year's Eve in the UK: 'The best fireworks ever'

Female Chinese students resort to eating roundworm eggs to ensure they look thin for job interviews

Bad diet: Chinese students have been swallowing roundworm eggs which hatch in the stomach. It can cause severe health problems

Female students in China have been eating roundworm eggs to lose weight for job interviews - because employment is so hard to come by.

They hatch in the stomach, allowing those who take them to shed pounds without exercising or dieting in the Xiamen, China.

But swallowing the worms is extremely dangerous - and definitely not to be recommended for those wanting to shed the pounds in the New Year.

With jobs shortages across the country, women in China are under pressure to appear thin if they are to have any chance of landing a role.

Employment stands at 22 per cent - and the size of the labour pool has grown by 112 million people over the last decade to more than one billion people.

Other students are staring at pictures for hours on end to suppress their appetite so they can shed excess weight.



A student called Xiaomei said that women are using a 'special soap' that helps them with their diets. Some are having up to 10 showers each day.

The treatments have no scientific basis and are likely to damage health.

In the 1990s Chinese women would take special teas and pills to lose weight. Acupuncture also emerged as a popular choice.

But many students struggle to find work as the world's most populous nation faces big unemployment problems with only 780 million labourers in jobs.

However, the work problem is largely confined to rural areas. Jobs in cities are being created quickly as China undergoes a rapid urbanisation.

'China is facing huge employment pressures at present and for the foreseeable future,' Yi Chengji, spokesman for the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said.

'As China's urbanisation quickens, employment pressures from the many surplus rural labourers are getting bigger and bigger.

'Currently there are about 100 million surplus rural workers that need to be transferred (to urban jobs).'

The country's urban population will rise to over 700 million people by 2015, outstripping the rural population for the first time.

According to an employment paper, there were 9.21 million registered urban jobless in China at the end of 2009, resulting in just a 4.3 per cent urban unemployment rate.

France braces for annual New Year’s car torchings

Flames engulf a burning car outside council housing flats on New Year’s Eve in Strasbourg’s western suburb of Hautepierre on December 31, 2008

France will deploy extra police and keep vandalism statistics under wraps on New Year’s Eve to fight what authorities say has become an annual “sweepstakes” of disaffected youths competing to see who can burn the most cars.

Youths in depressed suburbs of French cities have been torching hundreds of vehicles on New Year’s Eve and Bastille Day since the early 1990s. Police say the annual rite has turned competitive, with youths tracking the news in the first days of the new year to see which neighbourhood did the most damage.

“I have decided to put an end to the competition, the sweepstakes, and will longer publish the number of burnt vehicles,” Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said this week, adding that publishing statistics encouraged vandalism.

Opposition politicians described the move as an attempt by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative government to cover up the violence.



“The government tends to eliminate unfavourable indicators. The interior minister has been publishing trumped-up statistics for years, and now Hortefeux is going even further,” Socialist deputy Delphine Batho, a security specialist, told Reuters.

Last year, the Interior Ministry said 1,137 cars had been torched, a 30 per cent rise on 2008. French media reported at the time that several thousand cars had been burnt.

Nearly 54,000 police officers will be deployed across France, a rise of some 6,000 compared to normal New Year’s Eve staffing levels, and additional command posts set up in several cities, Hortefeux said today.

The image of burning cars remains particularly evocative in France in the wake of urban riots in December 2005. Sarkozy came to power in 2007 promising to quell violence, but crime and vandalism have inched up in the past year.

Arson in France’s “sensitive urban areas” rose by 17.2 per cent between 2008 and 2009, according to a 2010 study by the Observatory of Sensitive Urban Zones. In 2009 a total of 12,874 cars were burnt, it reported.

The jail has seen staff cuts of up to 20 per cent in two years

Only two guards were on duty as balaclava-clad inmates caused at least £2million of damage by burning down buildings at an open jail yesterday.

Israel’s ex-president Moshe Katsav guilty of rape

Israel’s former President, Moshe Katsav, (centre) is seen inside the Tel Aviv District Court as the verdict on rape and other charges of sexual misconduct against him is handed down on December 30, 2010

Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav was found guilty of rape and other sex crimes yesterday, in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a sad day for the Jewish state.

Katsav, who could now face years in prison, had denied charges he twice raped an aide when he was a cabinet minister in the late 1990s, and molested or sexually harassed two other women who worked for him during his 2000-2007 term as president.

But a three-judge panel said his testimony had been “riddled with lies.”



“When a woman says no, she means no,” the panel said in its ruling.

Katsav was also convicted of obstructing justice, for trying to confer with one complainant about her testimony to police.

The ashen-faced 65-year-old had no comment for reporters as he was spirited out of Tel Aviv District Court by a scrum of relatives, attorneys and bodyguards.

One of his lawyers, Avigdor Feldman, criticised the unanimous verdict for ignoring “all of the doubts” about the women’s accounts and said Katsav planned to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

State Attorney Moshe Lador praised Israel’s legal system, saying that few countries would have prosecuted their head of state for such crimes. “Positions of power cannot grant immunity to criminals, however senior they may be,” he said.

“This is a sad day for the state of Israel and its residents,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party of which Katsav is a veteran member, said in a statement after the verdict.

“Today the court conveyed two clear-cut messages, that all are equal before the law and that every woman has exclusive rights to her body,” Netanyahu said.

Rape carries a minimum prison term of four years and a maximum of 16 years in Israel. Moshe Negbi, legal analyst for Israel Radio, told Reuters any sentences handed down to Katsav for the lesser charges would probably be served concurrently.

DISGRACE

Though the scandal had forced Katsav’s early retirement in disgrace, it had little impact on Israeli government functions, as the presidency is largely ceremonial.

But the allegations against the Iranian-born leader, whose rise from the slums once served as a shining example for disadvantaged Jewish immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, stirred deep emotions in Israel, where the elite has traditionally been of European descent.

The verdict was dubbed an “earthquake” by one Israeli newspaper and welcomed by women’s groups that have long complained of lax attitudes to sexual harassment in workplaces.

Katsav, who is religiously observant, had cast himself as the victim of extortion and an ethnically-motivated “witch hunt.” Relatives said he would campaign to clear his name.

“This trial, where the judges rule according to their feelings, is not in keeping the ethics of Israel,” Katsav’s son Boaz told reporters.

“God willing, the whole nation will know that dad, the eighth president of the State of Israel, is innocent.”

Out of concern for the complainants’ privacy, much of the trial had taken place behind closed doors. Some commentators predict Katsav, should he appeal, will argue that the Tel Aviv District Court proceedings were not transparent enough.

Katsav immigrated with his family to Israel in 1951. At the age of 24 he became the country’s youngest mayor and went on to hold a number of Likud cabinet posts.

Parliament elected him president in 2000 in a surprise victory over Shimon Peres, Israel’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning elder statesman. Peres succeeded Katsav as president, an appointment observers say has restored dignity to the post.

The eruption of the Katsav affair had amplified corruption scandals that brought down Israel’s then premier, Ehud Olmert.

Hosting Olmert in Moscow in late 2006, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president at the time, quipped before TV cameras that Katsav “didn’t look like a guy who could be with 10 women.”

The four inch gadget that helps British soldiers to pinpoint Taliban snipers

The device will be trialled this month with the Parachute Regiment in Afghanistan.

British soldiers are to test a revolutionary new device which can pinpoint the exact position of enemy snipers 1,000 yards away.

The tiny computerised ‘sniper spotter’, which has been developed by Army scientists at the top-secret Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in Wiltshire, identifies the shooter’s location in an instant, enabling British troops to fire back immediately and accurately.

The new high-tech gadget – just 4in square and weighing 11oz – is worn on a soldier’s arm. It is connected to a shoulder sensor which pinpoints the location.



The detector’s powerful acoustic processing technology evaluates the enemy position by determining the target’s co-ordinates on a small screen with an arrow indicator.

Simultaneously it bleeps a warning into a headset connected to the device.

The Boomerang Warrior-X processor is the most advanced detector on the market. It has been refined by the scientists from a US system used in Iraq.

The small square-shaped detector will also allow Joint Tactical Air Controllers to forward exact locations of the enemy to fighter pilots for an air strike.

Sources say each unit – known officially known as the Compact Soldier Worn Shooter-Detector System – costs £10,000. An initial 1,000 have been ordered for British troops in Afghan¬istan’s southern Helmand province. If trials are successful, more soldiers will be issued with it later this year.

The way the technology works is a closely guarded secret, but the unique software provides constant updates on the enemy’s location – even if they move position while being fired at.

A senior source said: ‘This bit of kit could be a life-saver. An earlier, larger model was used by US forces in Iraq and in parts of Afghanistan, but this is a first for us and it is being seen as revolutionary.

‘It works on acoustics and when a round is fired the small display panel highlights an arrow indicating the direction of fire, which is a major help in returning fast and accurate fire.’