Heavy snow halts planes, trains and cars in Europe

Posted by Ahmed on 1:39 PM

Heavy snow halts planes, trains and cars in Europe

A police officer directs a car to exit the motorway A20 to a parking area nearAP – A police officer directs a car to exit the motorway A20 to a parking area near Grimmen, northern Germany, …
By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jan 10, 12:29 pm ET
BERLIN – Europeans were struggling to restore roads and railways Sunday after heavy snow caused hundreds of traffic accidents, halted flights from Germany and France, downed power lines in Poland and trapped more than 160 people overnight on a frozen German highway.
The 148 adults and 19 children stuck on Germany's coastal A20 highway survived by running their car engines until rescuers usingsnow plows and excavators pushed through 6.5-foot (2-meter) drifts to free them Sunday morning, police in the town of Altentreptow said.
"At least the firefighters were able to bring them hot beverages and food while they were waiting," said Jens Apelt, a spokesman for the Altentreptow highway police. After being rescued, the people were brought to tents set up by local aid organizations until rescuers could unblock all the cars.
"We're trying to free all cars from the snow so that the drivers can get back to their vehicles and take a different road instead," Apelt said.
Hundreds of weather-related road accidents were reported in Germany after a second day of heavy snowfall, especially along the Baltic Coast. Two men were killed when their car hit a tree in Nordvorpommern.
Ferry service across the Baltic to Scandinavia was canceled, and rough sea swells flooded several streets in the cities of Flensburg and Luebeck while threatening to break levees in the village of Dahmeshoeved. Rescue teams were busy repairing damage, the Germany news agency DAPD said.
"The waves of the Baltic Sea are whipping against the boardwalk, pulling bricks out of the wall with incredible power which are flying around uncontrollably," police in Luebeck-Travemuende said in a statement.
In southeastern France, about 800 people at a snowbound airport in Lyon spent the night huddled on waiting room armchairs or camping cots, after flights in and out of the southeastern city were halted Saturday night. Flights resumed gradually Sunday morning.
France's TF1 TV said freezing rain overnight made a virtual skating rink out of one highway near Tours inFrance's Loire Valley, with some cars skidding out of control and crashing into road barriers.
In southern Poland, about 80,000 people were without electricity Sunday after snow-laden tree branches cracked, damaging several power lines, the news agency PAP reported.
In the German city of Anklam, near the Polish border, rescue team freed a regional train carrying 14 passengers that was stuck in drifts, DAPD reported. Many trains in the northeastern state of MecklenburgWestern-Pomerania were not running because of snow blocking tracks, the railways said.
Several German coastal and island towns were also cut off from electricity.
At Frankfurt airport, 61 flights were canceled and more than 400 people spent the night at the airport.
In southern Denmark, strong winds and snowfall also caused chaos on the roads. Armored military tanks were put on duty to assist emergency vehicles through the snow, while authorities warned that big "wind-sensitive vehicles" should not cross the Oresund bridge to Sweden.
In Britain, Press Association news agency put the number of weather-related deaths at 26 — including a woman who died after being found lying in the snow in a wooded area in northern England, and a 90-year-old woman who fell and froze to death in her garden earlier this week.
British forecasters predicted temperatures would remain frigid in many areas for the next week. The Red Cross and the military have been mobilized to deliver supplies to snowbound Britons. British Gas said it had experienced its busiest week on record with many calls reporting broken boilers and frozen pipes.
In Croatia, snow swelled rivers and triggered emergency anti-flood measures. A number of houses were flooded in the southern town of Metkovic, forcing some residents to use small boats to reach polling stations during Sunday's presidential runoff, state-run news agency HINA reported.
___
Associated Press writers Raphael Satter in London, Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Jamey Keaten in Paris and Malin Rising in Stockholm, and Snjezana Vukic in Zagreb, Croatia, contributed to this report.

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China becomes biggest exporter, edging out Germany

Posted by Ahmed on 1:34 PM

China becomes biggest exporter, edging out Germany

FILE - A worker stands in front of containers at the newly open Yangshan deepAP – FILE - A worker stands in front of containers at the newly open Yangshan deep water port in this Dec. …
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By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer – 2 hrs 33 mins ago
BEIJING – Already the biggest auto market and steel maker, Chinaedged past Germany in 2009 to become the top exporter, yet another sign of its rapid rise and the spread of economic power from West to East.
Total 2009 exports were more than $1.2 trillion, China's customs agency said Sunday. That was ahead of the 816 billion euros ($1.17 trillion) forecast for Germany by its foreign trade organization, BGA.
China's new status is mostly symbolic but highlights its growing presence as an industrial power, major buyer of oil, iron ore and other commodities and, increasingly, as an investor and key voice inmanaging the global economy.
Its ability to unseat longtime export leader Germany reflects the ability of agile, low-cost Chinese manufacturers to keep selling abroad even as other exporters have been hammered by a slump in global demand.
China overtook Germany in 2007 as the third-largest economy and is expected to unseat Japan as No. 2 behind the United States as early as this year. Its trade boom has helped Beijing pile up the world's biggestforeign currency reserves at more than $2 trillion.
The global crisis speeded China's rise up the ranks as a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) government stimulus kept its economy and consumption growing while the U.S. and other markets struggled with recession. Chinese economic growth rose to 8.9 percent in the third quarter of 2009 and the government is forecasting a full-year expansion of 8.3 percent.
On Friday, data released by an industry group showed China topped the slumping United States in auto salesin 2009 — a status industry analysts a few years ago did not expect it to achieve until as late as 2020.
Economists and Germany's national chamber of commerce said earlier the country was likely to lose its longtime crown as top exporter.
China's exports per person are still much lower than those of Germany, which has a much smaller population of 80 million people. China sells low-tech goods such as shoes, toys and furniture, while Germany exports machinery and other higher-value products. German commentators note their country supplies the factory equipment used by top Chinese manufacturers.
"If China grows, this pushes the world's economy — and that's good for export-oriented Germany as well," an economist for the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Volker Treier, said last month.
Of course, with 1.3 billion people, China is still one of the world's poorest countries. It ranked 130th among economies in per capita income in 2008, according to the World Bank.
China's trade ended 2009 with exports rebounding in December, jumping 17.7 percent after 13 months of declines, the customs agency said.
The upturn was an "important turning point" for exporters, a customs agency economist, Huang Guohua, said on state television, CCTV.
"We can say that China's export enterprises have completely emerged from their all-time low in exports," Huang said.
Plunging demand in 2008 forced thousands of factories to close and threw millions of laborers out of work.
China's trade surplus shrank by 34.2 percent in 2009 to $196.07 billion, the customs agency said. That reflected China's stronger demand for imported raw materials and consumer goods.
Iron ore imports rose 41.6 percent to 630 million tons, while oil imports rose 13.9 percent to 1.4 billion barrels, the agency said. Economists say the buying binge has been driven in part by a Chinese effort to build up stockpiles while global prices are low.
The United States and other governments complain that part of China's export success is based on currency controls and improper subsidies that give its exporters an unfair advantage against foreign rivals.
Washington has imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of Chinese-made steel pipes and some other goods, while the European Union has imposed curbs on Chinese shoes.
The U.S. and other governments also complain that Beijing keeps its currency, the yuan, undervalued. Beijing broke the yuan's link to the dollar in 2005 and it rose gradually until late 2008, but has been frozen since then against the U.S. currency in what economists say is an effort by Beijing to keep its exporters competitive.
The dollar's weakness against the euro and some other currencies pulls down the yuan in markets that use them and makes Chinese goods even more attractive there, adding to China's trade surplus.
___
Associated Press writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report.
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Gunman Who Shot Pope John Paul II Reportedly Seeking $5M Book Deal

Posted by Ahmed on 1:31 PM

Gunman Who Shot Pope John Paul II Reportedly Seeking $5M Book Deal

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Outrage has greeted plans by Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin to sign multi-million-dollar book and film deals after his release from prison this month.
But in a handwritten letter sent to The Sunday Times, the Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca insisted this weekend that there was "great interest from Japan to Canada" in film and television documentary projects.
Almost three decades after he shot the Polish Pope in St Peter’s Square, Rome, in 1981, it remains a mystery whether he acted alone or was part of a Soviet-led plot to eliminate a threat to communist rule in eastern Europe.
Agca, 52 yesterday, is due to be released on January 18, according to Haci Ali Ozhan, his lawyer. He has been held in Turkey since 2000 when Italy pardoned and extradited him. He had been convicted of murdering Abdi Ipekci, a Turkish journalist, two years before he shot John Paul but escaped from jail.
Agca, who described himself in his letter as “sane and strong both physically and psychologically,” has reportedly sought $2 million for an exclusive television interview and $5 million for two books, including his autobiography. He has also written to Dan Brown, the author of the bestselling The Da Vinci Code, about a book entitled The Vatican Code, to be followed by a film.
“My plan is to proclaim the end of the world and to write the PERFECT GOSPEL [sic] ... I will proclaim the Perfect Christianity that Vatican [sic] has never understood,” Agca wrote in the letter to Brown. He did not say whether he would speak about the shooting of John Paul.
Arrested just after the shooting, Agca at first named three Bulgarians as his accomplices, saying he had been paid $1.2 million. But at their trial he declared himself Jesus Christ and they were acquitted.

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Petraeus: U.S. has plan to deal with Iran's nuclear program

Posted by Ahmed on 12:28 PM

Petraeus: U.S. has plan to deal with Iran's nuclear program

January 10, 2010 6:12 a.m. EST
Gen. David Petraeus said he thinks there is still time to engage in diplomacy with Iran.
Gen. David Petraeus said he thinks there is still time to engage in diplomacy with Iran.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Gen. David Petraeus: Contingency plans in place to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions
  • Iran says its nuclear development is for peaceful purposes
  • Petraeus: No deadline on enactment of any U.S. contingency plans
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Tampa, Florida (CNN) -- In addition to diplomacy and sanctions, the United States has developed contingency plans in dealing with Iran's nuclear facilities, a top U.S. military commander told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, did not elaborate on the plans in the interview, to be aired Sunday. But he said the military has considered the impacts of any action taken there.

"It would be almost literally irresponsible if CENTCOM were not to have been thinking about the various 'what ifs' and to make plans for a whole variety of different contingencies," Petraeus told Amanpour at the command's headquarters in Tampa.

Iran's nuclear program has become a thorn for the United States and its allies, and Washington has sharpened its tone on dealings over Tehran's program. The Islamic republic maintains the program is for peaceful purposes, but the United States and other Western nations fear Iran wants to acquire nuclear weapons.

Israel has called Iran's nuclear program the major threat facing its nation.

When asked about rumors that Israel could attack Iran's facilities,Petraeus declined to comment about Israel's military capabilities. But when asked about the vulnerability of the facilities, Petraeus said Iran has strengthened the facilities and has enhanced underground tunnels.

Still, the facilities are not bomb-proof.

"Well, they certainly can be bombed," he said. "The level of effect would vary with who it is that carries it out, what ordnance they have, and what capability they can bring to bear."

Iran is holding out on a United Nations-backed deal on its nuclear program that includes enriching uranium. The country had until the end of 2009 to accept the deal offered by the "P5 plus one" -- permanent U.N. Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany. Instead, Iran countered, giving the West until the end of January to accept its own proposal.

The general said he thinks there is still time for the nations to engage Iran in diplomacy, noting there is no deadline on the enactment of any U.S. contingency plans.

He added, however, that "there's a period of time, certainly, before all this might come to a head, if you will."

Christiane Amanpour's interview with Gen. David Petraeus airs Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on CNN.

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Lights coming back on for Californians after earthquake

Posted by Ahmed on 12:26 PM

Lights coming back on for Californians after earthquake

January 10, 2010 10:53 a.m. EST
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'It was a violent shake'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: Utility helicopters patrolling for possible gas line breaks caused by quake
  • At height of 6.5-magnitude quake, nearly 28,000 California residents were without power
  • Quake hit offshore Saturday about 33 miles from Eureka
  • California residents describe ground rolling beneath them

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Officials expect to have power fully restored by Sunday afternoon following a 6.5-magnitude earthquake which struck off the coast of northern California Saturday, leaving thousands without electricity.

The quake, which ran about 13.5 miles deep, hit at 4:27 p.m. Saturday, about 33 miles from the coastal city of Eureka, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Nearly a dozen aftershocks followed, the strongest at 4.5 magnitude. They continued into the early morning hours Sunday.

As of 7 a.m. Sunday, about 500 customers were still without power, said David Eisenhower, spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Company. The company hopes to restore power to those remaining customers Sunday, hopefully by the afternoon, he said.

The company was launching helicopters Sunday morning to patrol for gas leaks at the transmission lines that run through remote areas, he said, adding there have been no reports of such leaks.

As of Saturday night, the company said 28,000 customers, most in Humboldt County, were without power. Most had their lights back on by late Saturday night.

There were no reports of serious injuries or damage.

See iReports from areas affected by earthquake

Video: Quake strikes off California coast
Explainer: Measuring earthquakes
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St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka said it treated several people for minor quake-related injuries, but none were significant enough for the patient to be admitted.

Chris Durant, a reporter for the Eureka Times-Standard, said he was working on the second floor of the newspaper's concrete building when he and his colleagues felt the earthquake.

"We are used to feeling small ones," he said, "but after the first few seconds, we looked at each other and said, 'This is not a small one.'"

Eureka resident Cole Machado told CNN he was talking on the phone when he felt the ground shake. "I thought my TV was going to fall over."

Tom Grinsell, the fire chief in the nearby town of Ferndale, said it was "one of the strongest quakes I remember in quite a while. I assumed it was going to be a lot worse than we're seeing."

He said the quake had a "strong shaking to it and was rather lengthy."

Grinsell said his department has received numerous calls about broken glass, emptied shelves, and stucco and plaster knocked off walls. He added that the damage is cosmetic and that no buildings have collapsed.

Grinsell said officials have asked residents to stay off the roads because of debris, and to conserve water until it's certain there is no damage to the water system.

Ferndale resident Jessica Stephens Tucker described the movement from the temblor: "It rolled and rolled and then it slammed."

Dave Magni, owner of the Ivanhoe Hotel in Ferndale, said, "We are sitting in a sea of booze" after the quake.

Are you there? Send your iReports

A 6.5-magnitude quake is considered "strong", said CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras, who noted that about 120 earthquakes of that strength are recorded worldwide each year.

CNN's Dina Majoli, Nick Valencia, Steve Brusk, Samira Simone, Leslie Tripp and Greg Morrison contributed to this report.

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