Migrant boat sinks off Italy, up to 250 missing

ROME: Between 130 and 250 people were missing and at least 15 appeared to be dead after a boat carrying refugees from Libya capsized south of Sicily early on Wednesday, coast guard officials and aid workers said.

Rescuers picked up 47 people, including a heavily pregnant woman after the overloaded boat, which left Libya two days ago, sank at about 4:00 a.m. (0200 GMT) 40 miles (64 km) south of the island of Lampedusa.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a migrant assistance agency which has officials on Lampedusa, an Italian fishing boat rescued another three people.

Between 15 and 20 bodies were seen in the water, officials said but high winds and rough seas made it difficult for coast guard boats and a police helicopter to operate.

Coast guard officials said the boat had originally been carrying around 200 people but the IOM put the figure as high as 300, of whom it said some 250 were missing.

The incident provided a stark illustration of the dangers run by desperate people who pay about 1,000 euros ($1,427) for a place on one of the overloaded fishing vessels carrying refugees and migrants from Africa.

“The vessel, which was laden beyond capacity, had left the Libyan coast with migrants and asylum seekers from Somalia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Cote d’Ivoire, Chad and Sudan,” IOM said in a statement. “Some 40 women and 5 children were on board.

Only two women survived the shipwreck.”

On Monday, the United Nations refugee agency said more than 400 people fleeing Libya on two boats were missing.

French first lady Carla turns to music again

PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife Carla Bruni is currently recording her fourth album in Paris and not as reported in Los Angeles, her agent said Friday.

The supermodel-turned-pop star is writing the lyrics and the music for the new album, the release date for which has not yet been made public. Some press reports said she was planning to record the work in the United States.

The French first lady’s last album “Comme si de rien n’etait” (“As if Nothing Had Happened”), a collection of folk-pop songs mostly penned by Bruni, was released in 2008 and has sold about two million copies.

Bruni made headlines last week when the Cannes film festival announced that a Woody Allen movie in which she has a tiny part would open the glitzy 10-day event.

The romantic comedy “Midnight in Paris,” with a starry cast that includes Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard and US actors Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody, will be shown out of competition at the world’s most prestigious film bash. AGENCIES

Bruni says Sarkozy often thinks about second term

PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy often thinks about whether to run for a second term in 2012, his wife, former supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, said.

Sarkozy, who was elected in 2007, has yet to say whether he will seek a second five-year term and has given himself until the second half of 2011 to make up his mind.

Asked if Sarkozy had sought her opinion on running again for the presidency, Bruni-Sarkozy told reporters: “He asks for my opinion about many things, as many husbands and wives do.

“But as far as that decision is concerned, it’s a choice that is up to him alone,” she said.

“I think he reflects a lot about it, but I”m not going to get involved. It”s too important, too difficult, too personal for me to get involved. But I will follow him whatever he does,” she added.

Sarkozy, his popularity ratings hovering close to record lows, is fighting to regain public confidence after pushing through an unpopular pension reform in October.

His entourage is drumming up support for a second bid and the opposition has accused him of governing as though he were already on the campaign trail.

Asked if she wanted to remain France’s first lady after 2012, Bruni-Sarkozy said: “He was the one elected by the French, all that depends on him. I would be glad (to stay).”

The catwalk star-turned-chanteuse and Sarkozy married in February 2008, four months after Sarkozy divorced his second wife.

Greece: blasts outside Swiss, Russian embassies

Greek police have said that they have detonated a suspicious package outside the Bulgarian embassy in Athens after blasts outside Parliament and at the Swiss Embassy. No injuries or damage were reported from Tuesday’s three small explosions. Police say far-left domestic groups are suspected.
On Monday, four mail bomb failed to reach their targets – French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the embassies of Mexico, the Netherlands and Belgium. Two Greek men were arrested on suspicion of plotting the attacks.
The bombs were found after one of the devices exploded at a delivery service in central Athens, lightly wounding a worker at the delivery company.

French strike hits petrol pumps

France’s 12 oil refineries remained blocked on Wednesday as workers continued strikes to protest against the reform of France’s pension system, union representatives said.
Nine of the refineries were producing no oil on Wednesday, two were in the process of halting production and one was operating at a minimum level, the CGT and CFDT unions said. Fuel supplies from all 12 refineries remained blocked, they added.
The strikes began at the refineries on Oct. 12, causing shortages this week at petrol pumps across the country. Widespread protests against pension reforms in France, which are now in their sixth day, are beginning to bite.
Petrol pumps are running dry and the airports in Paris are cancelling flights. One politician has said it is now a trial of strength between the government of Nicolas Sarkozy and the unions.

Protesters scuffle with riot police in Paris

PARIS: There were scuffles between demonstrators and riot police on the streets of Paris on Saturday evening, after a mass peaceful protest against Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension reform plans.

Footage showed demonstrators running along streets, shouting, throwing rubbish bins and barriers and men being arrested by plain clothes policemen.

Earlier, hundreds of thousands had marched through the streets for the fifth time in a month to protest the government’s plan to raise the retirement age to 62.

Frequent strikes in the last few weeks have disrupted French trains and airports, closed schools and docks, and left rubbish piling up in the southern port of Marseille.

Police estimated some 825,000 people marched in cities across France, lower than during an October 12 march – and far lower than the union estimate of three (m) million.

In Paris, huge

President Zardari to raise Cameron”s ”uncalled for remarks”

PARIS: President Asif Ali Zardari will address British Prime Minister David Cameron”s “uncalled for” criticism of Pakistan”s stance on terrorism at a meeting this week, the Pakistani leader”s spokesman said.

Zardari was in Paris on Monday for talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and was due to travel the next day to Britain, whose leader last week accused elements within Pakistan of backing Afghan Taliban extremists.

In a statement issued after the talks, Zardari”s office said he told Sarkozy it was “unfortunate if some people continued to express doubts and misgivings about our will and determination to fight the militants to the finish.”

Zardari told his French host that Pakistan was committed to the fight against extremists in its region, insisting: “No other country in the international coalition has paid such a heavy price in this fight.”

The Pakistani leader is due to meet the British prime minister on Friday at his country retreat outside London, despite calls from some in Pakistan for him to cancel the visit in protest at Cameron”s criticism.

Zardari”s office rejected this idea, arguing that the trip gives Pakistan a chance to make its case, according to the same statement, which cited presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar.

“The spokesperson rejected the notion that the president should have cancelled the UK trip to protest Prime Minister Cameron”s remarks in Banglore,” the statement said.

“He said that Cameron”s uncalled for remarks and the fact that these were made in India had disappointed the people of Pakistan and it was all the more important that the president”s visit to the UK went ahead as planned to raise this and other issues with the British prime minister.”

Earlier, a senior French official had told reporters that the issue of Cameron”s criticism had not come up at the bilateral meeting.

Last week, criticising Pakistan during a trade visit to India, Cameron said: “We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror.”

Sarkozy holds meeting on French World Cup fiasco

PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy will Wednesday hold a government meeting on the country”s disastrous World Cup exit, and on Thursday will meet veteran France striker Thierry Henry, officials said.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon, Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot and junior sports minister Rama Yade will meet Sarkozy to discuss the team”s dismal performance that ended Tuesday with a 2-1 defeat by South Africa. The president will on Thursday meet with Henry, at the striker”s request, Sarkozy”s office said.

Sarkozy pressured on Pakistan arms deal allegations

PARIS: French opposition lawmakers Thursday called on President Nicolas Sarkozy to give all details of any links to suspected kickbacks on arms deals allegedly used to fund political campaigns.

Three Socialist deputies spoke out after extracts from a Luxembourg police report published Wednesday alleged that a company set up with Sarkozy”s approval channelled money from arms deal commissions to fund political activities in France.

French investigators have since 2008 been probing allegations that the cancelling of commissions for one of the arms deals allegedly prompted an attack that killed 11 French engineers in Pakistan in 2002.

News website Mediapart quoted a Luxembourg police report as saying that Sarkozy oversaw the establishment in Luxembourg of two companies, Heine and Eurolux, when he was budget minister under Prime Minister Edouard Balladur.

Balladur and Sarkozy have repeatedly dismissed allegations of illegal party funding.

But Mediapart quoted the Luxembourg police as saying: “The agreements on the creation of the two companies appear to have come directly from Prime Minister Balladur and Finance (Budget) Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.”

“Part of the funds that passed through Luxembourg (companies) came back to France to finance political campaigns” in 1995, added the police report, which cited unspecified documents.

Sarkozy served as spokesman for Balladur”s 1995 presidential campaign.

Government spokesman Luc Chatel dismissed the recurring allegations as “a serial fairytale” and said the government was cooperating with an investigation by a French judge.

Socialist lawmaker Manuel Valls and the party”s deputy leader Harlem Desir called for French judges to obtain the Luxembourg police documents and shed light on the affair.

“The officials at the time, namely Edouard Balladur and Nicolas Sarkozy, the budget minister who was in charge of the sale and the commissions, must be asked to provide all the information that the French are waiting for,” Desir added.

“The ministers at the time owe that to the French people and to the families of the victims” of the Pakistan killings, he said.

Balladur lost the 1995 presidential election to Jacques Chirac, who promptly cancelled commissions that were allegedly due to be paid to Pakistani officers.

In May 2002 a bomb in Karachi killed 11 French naval engineers who were in Pakistan to build the submarines.

A French judge investigating the attack suspects it may have been carried out in revenge for the cancelled bribes. That claim was first raised by an internal inquiry carried out in 2002 by DCN, the French state-run shipbuilder that made the submarines.

A Socialist deputy who headed a parliamentary commission on the Karachi attack, Bernard Cazeneuve, was quoted by Le Parisien newspaper on Thursday as saying: “the government is doing everything to obstruct the truth.”

Defending the government, Chatel said: “These contracts took place in the very early 1990s,” before Balladur became prime minister in 1993.

“The Balladur government did not have responsibility at the time” the arms deals were signed, Chatel added.

Africa must be on UN Security Council: France

NICE, France: French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday Africa should be represented on the U.

Continued here: 
Africa must be on UN Security Council: France

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