Tension as Italian students protest education law

Thousands of Italian students marched in protest against a new university reform law yesterday as police blocked off large parts of central Rome to stop a repeat of violent clashes at a similar march a week ago.

Last week’s demonstration saw cars torched, shop windows smashed and dozens injured in street battles between protesters and riot police after the initially peaceful march descended into some of the worst violence seen in Rome for years.

No trouble was reported yesterday in a rainy Rome but there were clashes at a demonstration in Palermo and reports of other incidents in Naples, Milan and Turin.

The law, which the government says will strengthen Italy’s crumbling university system but which critics say will merely cut funding without solving real problems, was due for Senate approval yesterday though a vote may be delayed to today.





In Rome, the march avoided the so-called “Red Zone” created by police blockades, instead occupying part of the A24 highway that runs east to the city of L’Aquila, whose residents have long complained bitterly of broken government promises to clear up the damage from last year’s earthquake.

“You all alone in the Red Zone, us free in the city” read one mocking banner, addressed to the government ministries and parliament buildings in the historic centre.

With an official youth unemployment rate of around 25 per cent in the country overall and as high as 35 per cent in the poorer south, the battle over university reform has crystallised discontent over the future of Italy’s young people.

“We will certainly continue mobilising,” Rome student Claudio Rizzo told Reuters Television.

“It’s not only a mobilisation against university reforms but of a generation that is making itself heard again over the politics of the country, the issues we face and the precarious situation in which we live,” he said.

Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini, who has piloted the new law through parliament, said the measures were urgently needed to equip Italian students for employment.

“It is essential to restore dignity and usability to Italian university degrees,” she said in an open letter to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The reform cuts the number of university courses and faculties and reduces funding for grants. It also sets time limits for research, overhauls the admissions system, increases the role of the private sector in university governance and limits the duration of rectorships.

The government, under pressure to cut public debt, says spending cuts are necessary but the reform will create a more merit-based system which is closer to employers’ needs.

Supporters of the bill say Italy’s overcrowded universities produce too many social science graduates who are ill-fitted for employment, and not enough qualified engineers or English speakers, and the system needs radical overhaul.

Critics, many of whom also support the principle of reforming the universities, say the system has been systematically starved of funds and further cuts will seriously endanger Italy’s research capacity.

“We are asking for this bill to be blocked and for the whole public education system to be refinanced,” the Student Network, which groups different associations, said in a statement

South Korea army to hold huge drill, North silent

A South Korean Army soldier walks up steps of a guard post near the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, north of Seoul, on December 22, 2010.


South Korea announced land and sea military exercises yesterday including its largest-ever live-fire drill near North Korea just as tension on the peninsula was beginning to ease after Pyongyang’s attack on a southern island.

The land drill, involving three dozen mobile artillery guns, six fighter jets, multiple launch rocket systems and 800 troops, the largest number of personnel in a single peace-time exercise, will take place on Thursday and is likely irritate the North.

The scale of the drill and the timing, coming right after the tensely staged a live-fire exercise on Monday, indicate South Korea’s conservative President Lee Myung-bak sees more political mileage in taking a tough military stance rather than reverting to dialogue, despite overtures from Pyongyang.




Lee’s government was heavily criticised at home for a perceived weak response to North Korea’s shelling of the southern island of Yeonpyeong last month.

“We’ll be sure to deal a punishing blow if the North tries to repeat the kind of situation like the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong,” Brigadier General Ju Eun-shik said in a statement.

There was no immediate reaction from North Korea. State news agency KCNA, which regularly denounces the South, United States and Japan, made no mention of the drills, although it carried an article lambasting a US lawmaker critical of Pyongyang as “human scum” and a “political illiterate.”

South Korea is also holding three days of live-firing naval drills off the peninsula’s east coast starting yesterday, a media official at the Defence Ministry said.

He would not provide details. Yonhap news agency said the drills were taking place 100 km south of the maritime border with North Korea and involved at least six naval vessels.

North Korea this week offered to re-admit UN inspectors concerned about its nuclear-weapon programme, leading to speculation of a resumption of six-party disarmament talks and a general sense of relief that the crisis had passed.

“The drills are an indication that (the South) is aiming to keep tensions very high, partly because of the possibility of the North striking back,” said Kim Yong-hyun of Dongguk University.

“Dialogue is clearly not high on the agenda. It’s still very much in the mode of how they can respond to incidents like the one on Yeonpyeong and to show that response in the future will be overwhelming.”

The South Korean Army is making no secret that the drill is aimed at displaying its firepower to its neighbour.

“Yes, it will be a show of force against that,” an army officer said, when asked if the shelling of Yeonpyeong last month was a factor in the land drill’s planning.

He said similar drills had been staged previously on more than 50 occasions, but the scale this time was unprecedented.

“The scale of mechanised assets taking place is enormous. When we would normally have 6 K-9 mechanised artillery, we’ll have 36. We’ll have the F-15 jets firing. We’ll have choppers. You can say most of the mechanised assets taking part will be firing live ammunition.”

It will take place in the Pocheon region, less than 50 km north of downtown Seoul.

The latest crisis peaked when North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong, just south of the disputed maritime border, killing four people — including two civilians — in the worst attack on South Korean territory since the end of the civil war in 1953.

The South carried out live-fire drills on Yeonpyeong on Monday, which provoked only a verbal reaction from the North. It had vowed to strike back if the South went ahead with the drills, prompting fears of all-out war.

China, North Korea’s only major ally, has urged dialogue to resolve the crisis and urged Pyongyang to follow through on its offer to allow UN inspectors into the country.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the planned drill.

Analysts say the North is unlikely to undertake another hostile act like this year’s attack on South Korea’s Cheonan warship, blamed on the North by the United States and the South, and the Yeonpyeong shelling, at least in the near term.

Its most likely next move would be to conduct live-fire artillery drills or possibly a short-range missile test into its waters off the west coast.

Analysts have said they believe its recent military acts were aimed at bolstering the ruling family as ailing leader Kim Jong-il grooms his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor.

“North Korea likes to step towards the brink and then away from it again,” said Brian Myers, an expert on the North at South Korea’s Dongseo University.

“The news from Pyongyang in the past few days indicates that the Kim Jong-il regime is now in the backing-off part of its usual cycle.”

He said the North probably did not expect the South to go through with live-fire exercises on Monday.

“If it had, it would not have made such loud threats of reprisal in its domestic media. After the exercises took place, the Kim regime had to tell its own people that the South’s ‘provocation’ was not worth responding to, a flip-flop it cannot afford to repeat in just a few days. I don’t expect the North to be quite as vocal about the next round of exercises.”

South Korean Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun, speaking before the announcement of the drill, said domestic financial markets had weathered the crisis and the South Korean economy, Asia’s fourth-largest, stayed on a growth track.

But he warned that the tension could still dent consumer spending with a key sentiment measure due tomorrow.

South Korean markets were unaffected by the tensions with foreign investors buying into stocks and bond futures. Traders said earlier that the won currency was generally being affected more by concern over the euro zone.

Consumers and businesses in South Korea say they have lived with tension on the divided peninsula for years and markets do not always react, although the recent crisis had rattled global markets and remained an underlying risk

Iraqi Parliament Approves New Government

Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks at the house of parliament in Baghdad December 21, 2010. The Iraqi parliament has unanimously approved a new government, with incumbent Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister.

Religious ritual believed to be behind death of girl who was found with her heart cut out and other organs strewn round home

Neighbours of a mother arrested after her four-year-old daughter was killed as an apparent religious offering told how they heard screams from the family's flat.

Nusayba Bharuchi's corpse was found stabbed to death in the kitchen with her heart and other organs cut out and strewn around her flat and lying next to her mother, Shayna.

The 35-year-old woman was allegedly chanting verses of the Koran as her daughter's disembowelled corpse lay next to her in the home in Clapton, East London.

Crime scene: Shayna Bharuchi, 35, was allegedly sitting in a her kitchen chanting verses of the Koran as her daughter Nusayba's disembowelled corpse lay next to her.

The woman, believed to be from Somalia, had her MP3 on full blast as she listened to the Muslim holy book.

The mother, who is understood to have two teenage children of 14 and 16, has since been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and is in a secure unit as police yesterday continued to guard the third-floor premises on the estate.

The gruesome scene was discovered by the girl's father, Jerome Negney, when he arrived home to the flat on Thursday to find his partner clutching a kitchen knife.

The man, believed to be a Muslim convert, dialled 999 and paramedics pronounced the girl dead at the scene. Police said next of kin have been informed.

One elderly neighbour said last night: 'Nobody knew her very well but the children seemed very nice. However I used to be awoken by terrible screaming of a woman's voice in the middle of the night which was a regular occurence.

'Sometimes the screams would last for about 10 minutes.'

Another neighbour, who lives in the downstairs flat and asked not to be named, said: 'I was feeding my daughter her lunch at about 3pm and suddenly heard horrific screaming. It is shocking and so upsetting.'

He said the couple have lived in the flat for about a year.

A post-mortem examination will take place on Saturday at Poplar mortuary in east London.

The Metropolitan Police's Child Abuse Investigation Command is leading the murder inquiry. They are not believed to be looking for anybody else.

Yesterday another shocked resident, a mum in her 30s, said the mother always wore a black headscarf with a veil.

She added: 'Usually you could only see her eyes.

'I often heard shouting coming from the flat as she and a man argued.

'Their quarrels would become very heated.'

Russia supports India UN seat quest, seals deals

the two countries have been close economic and political partners since Soviet days but India’s growing ties with the US has made Russia ill at ease


Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today threw his weight behind India’s quest for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and secured agreements to deepen nuclear energy and defence cooperation.

Russia has been India’s close economic and political partner since Soviet days, and monopolised India’s defence market for decades, but New Delhi wants to reduce its reliance on one country to reflect its growing clout on the world stage.

India’s growing ties with the US, underscored by a landmark civil nuclear deal, has made Russia ill at ease.





New Delhi had been expected to seek backing from Russia during Medvedev’s visit for its ambition to secure a permanent seat on an enlarged UN Security Council, following statements of support from Washington and Paris in recent months.

“The Russian Federation supports India as a deserving and strong candidate for a permanent seat in an expanded UN Security Council,” a joint Russian-Indian statement said.

Leaders from Britain, the United States, France and China – along with Russia, the permanent members of the UN Security Council – have all visited India in the last six months, securing contracts worth a total of around US$50 billion (RM157 billion).

Russia and India signed today a long-awaited contract to jointly develop fifth generation fighter aircraft, potentially worth tens of billions of dollars, and clinched a deal to expand capacity at a Russian-built nuclear power plant in south India.

The deals announced on Tuesday were largely already known, and no financial figures were given, but the agreements may go some way to satisfy those concerned about India too quickly cutting its defence cord with its Cold War-era ally.

Russia also sees India as a counterweight to China and a potential ally in Afghanistan.

Medvedev, accompanied by a large delegation of business leaders, was holding talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi today in New Delhi. He was then to visit the Taj Mahal in Agra and India’s financial capital Mumbai tomorrow.

“It is well known that we want to diversify our basket of suppliers for our strategic areas. We will always have close ties with Russia, but they are no longer the only game in town,” said a top Indian government official, who declined to be identified.

ENERGY-HUNGRY

A statement said the two countries would work on a design project for the stealth fighters and had agreed to discuss building the third and fourth reactors for a nuclear power plant in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Medvedev had been expected to secure a contract on jointly developing 250-300 fifth generation fighter aircraft over 10 years. The contract amount was unknown, but unofficially said to be around US$35 billion.

US and European companies are lobbying hard to win contracts for new fighter jets in one of the world’s biggest defence contract markets.

Today’s statement said the two sides had also signed a deal for Russia to supply missiles to the Indian army. No details were given on the size of the deal.

Russia is also keen to continue supplying nuclear technology and expertise to energy-hungry India as it plans to add 63,000 MW of nuclear power by 2032 to support its economic growth.

“Energy is one area where Russia will be the most important partner for India both in terms of conventional and non conventional energy ... Russians are one of our main suppliers of nuclear power plants,” said Lalit Mansingh, former Indian foreign secretary.

Behind the rhetoric of expanding ties with its fellow BRIC economy – the term used to group emerging powers Brazil, Russia, India and China – bilateral trade is eclipsed by Russia’s booming ties with the European Union and China.

The Kremlin said trade with India would total US$10 billion this year, while statistics show Russia’s trade with the European Union stood at US$246 billion in the first 10 months of 2010, and trade with China was US$47.5 billion in the same period.

India and Russia agreed to boost annual bilateral trade to US$20 billion by 2015.

Medvedev’s stop in Mumbai includes a visit to the Hindi-language movie industry Bollywood.

“(In Russia there is a) 24/7 broadcast of Indian movies. I think that exists only in India and Russia,” Medvedev told a joint news conference with Singh.

Broadway 'Spider-Man' stunt double falls to stage

Hundreds stranded on crippled train line

Hundreds of travellers were stranded on trains as damage to overhead power lines brought one of the country’s main rail lines grinding to a halt today.

All East Coast train services between London and the northeast were suspended.

The disruption is the latest to hit transport in Britain during a bitter cold snap, with snow and ice also grounding flights and slowing road traffic.

A spokesman for the train company told BBC television that several hundred passengers were stuck on six trains in different locations between London and Peterborough.

Disruptions have left thousands of train passengers frustrated.



A passenger who was briefly trapped on one of the trains near Huntingdon station in Cambridgeshire described how he had to clamber out of the stranded train in freezing conditions.

“We’re going to have to climb down a ladder from the train on to the trackside, where they’re going to evacuate us in groups of 20,” Ian Dormer told BBC Radio.

The company said in a statement all train services to and from London King’s Cross station on the busy line had been suspended for the rest of the day.

“East Coast is also advising all passengers who have arrived at King’s Cross to go home and restart their journeys tomorrow,” it said.

The company runs 136 weekday train services along Britain’s east coast, linking London and Scotland.

Two-thirds of Holocaust victims identified

The gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Oswiecim are seen behind a bouquet of flowers.

A list of confirmed names of Jews killed by the Nazis in World War Two has reached the four million mark, Israel’s Holocaust museum announced today, saying the identity of all six million dead may never be known.

“It is a moral imperative, an obligation for us to retrieve information and commemorate each and every individual who perished,” said Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Jerusalem.

“By doing so, a lot of important material comes up in our research to help combat Holocaust denial,” he told Reuters.

Yad Vashem has sorted through “millions of occurrences of names” over nearly six decades of research and taking testimony from survivors.




Announcing the organisation had confirmed the identities of four million of the Jews who perished, Shalev said he doubted the names of all six million would ever come to light, although he stressed the figure was still accurate. “I don’t see that we will get to every last name,” Shalev said, noting the difficulty of verifying the deaths or survival of small children, and other unrecorded victims executed or carted off to death camps across Europe during the war.

Yad Vashem, founded in the early 1950s, has redoubled its efforts to identify the victims in the past few years, partly to counter detractors such as Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who publicly deny or question whether the Holocaust took place.

Shalev said the four million names Yad Vashem has verified so far is double the number the institution had confirmed as recently as 1999.

Advances in computer technology have speeded up the process of identifying victims, along with an increasing flow of information from eastern Europe where most Jews on the continent perished.

Shalev said he hoped researchers would identify at least five million of the victims within a few years.

He said the six million death toll is based largely on census tallies from before the war of Jews who lived in specific towns and cities from where most were deported to death camps or otherwise executed.

Many of these lists have been in turn checked against millions of pages of survivor testimony taken over the years and prisoner records, among other archive material at Yad Vashem’s disposal.

Queen Elizabeth’s granddaughter to marry rugby player

Zara Phillips is the second grandchild of Britain's Queen Elizabeth to announce an engagement this year

Zara Phillips, the granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, is to marry England rugby player Mike Tindall, the royal family said today.

No date was given for the wedding of 29-year-old Phillips, daughter of Princess Anne and her first husband Mark Phillips.

The announcement comes a month after Prince William, the elder son of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, said he would marry his long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton in April.

Phillips was considered something of a “royal rebel” as a teenager, having her tongue pierced as a teenager.



However she went on to follow in her mother’s footsteps enjoying a successful horse-riding career. In 2006, she won an individual gold on her horse Toytown at the World Equestrian Games in Germany, helped Britain win a team silver and was voted BBC sports personality of the year.

Tindall is also a well-known sportsman. The 32-year-old has played more than 60 times for England and was part of the England team which beat Australia to win the World Cup in 2003.

Princess Anne rode in the 1976 Olympics and was European Champion in 1971, while Mark Phillips won an Olympic team gold in eventing in 1972. They divorced in 1992.

Rome ‘bomb’ could not explode

Two Carabinieri stand in front of a Rome underground train station where an explosive device was found, December 21, 2010


A suspected bomb was found in an empty underground train carriage in Rome today, but police said it lacked a detonator and could not have exploded.

The device, described by one police source as rudimentary, was found by a driver preparing a train for service in a marshalling yard near the Rebibbia metro station at about 0900 GMT (1700 Malaysian time), transport authority ATAC said.

It was in a box with cables, batteries and antennas, an ATAC spokesman said.

“It didn’t have a detonator, it couldn’t explode,” a spokesman for the Carabinieri, Italy’s paramilitary police force, told Reuters by telephone.

He said it contained a small quantity of explosive powder.

The device was discovered at a time of increased tension in Italy following anti-government protests last week that descended into some of the worst violence in Rome for years.

A senior Iraqi official said last week that al Qaeda was planning attacks in the US, Britain and Europe around Christmas.

A suspected suicide bomber was killed in a botched attack in Stockholm on December 11. Police believe he was planning to attack a train station or department store at the height of the Christmas shopping season.