Friday, 14 January 2011

Australia floods: Brisbane begins massive clean-up

Residents remove mud from houses in the Brisbane suburb of Westend on 14 Jan 2010 Layers of thick mud have filled houses and businesses in Brisbane

People in Brisbane have begun to clean up swathes of sludge and debris as floodwaters begin to recede from Australia's third largest city.

At least 30,000 properties in the Queensland city have been swamped and many areas remain without power.

Residents have been dragging sodden possessions from water-logged homes.

Meteorologists have warned that there could be more heavy rain to come in the flood-hit state, in which at least 16 people have lost their lives this week.

Floods have surged through southern Queensland since December, causing widespread devastation.

Many of those who perished were swept away when flash floods hit Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley area, west of Brisbane, on Monday.

One body was found 80km (50 miles) from where the person disappeared, and police say some of the missing may never be found, despite intensive searches.

"There are over 200km of waterways that are [being searched] apart from that land area," said Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson.

"But regrettably we could not exclude completely the possibility that someone may never be found."

'Heartache'

In Brisbane, water levels have fallen two metres from their peak of 4.46m (14.6ft) just before 0530 local time on Thursday (1930 GMT Wednesday).

Map

Residents have been digging ruined possessions out of stinking sludge and throwing out carpets and furniture thickly coated in mud.

Several looters have been arrested and extra police officers have been deployed to the city.

Queensland State Premier Anna Bligh called for a spirit of co-operation in communities.

"There is a lot of heartache and grief as people start to see for the first time what has happened to their homes and their streets," she said.

"In some cases we have street after street after street where every home has been inundated to the roof level, affecting thousands of people.

"I encourage people please to make an effort to help your friends, help your families."

Structural fears

Officials have said the clean-up could take months.

Rubbish collectors have reappeared on the city's streets, while Mayor Campbell Newman called for individuals or businesses with bulldozers and other equipment to help clear roads.

"The big priority this morning and through the day is to try and get the roads open. Clean the debris and the silt off the roads and get them open," he said.


USEFUL FLOOD INFORMATION

Officials have also warned that the reopening of a main road connecting central Brisbane with western suburbs would be delayed because of structural concerns.

Electricity has been restored to the majority of areas, but more than 43,000 homes across flood-hit parts of the state still have no power.

"Certainly heading up to the river towards Milton we've seen some houses that are still under water, and they may not be connected to the grid for days if not weeks, until they're able to be tested and deemed safe," Danny Donald, a spokesman for power company Energex, told ABC News.

Further south, the threat of flooding in the town of Goondiwindi appeared to be reduced, as the Macintyre River held steady at 10.64m, below the top of the town's 11m levee.

But floods continue to move southwards towards the neighbouring state of New South Wales, threatening more towns.

On Friday, the national weather bureau warned that above-average cyclone activity was expected to last until March. A storm in the Coral Sea is being monitored, and threatens to bring more rain, it said.

The weeks of rain have been blamed on a La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific.

US banks to close foreign diplomatic mission accounts

A JP Morgan Chase sign JP Morgan Chase is one of several banks that will be closing diplomatic accounts

Foreign diplomats have complained to the US government about the decision of several US banks to end services for diplomatic missions.

The diplomats of several countries said they were actively searching for new banks but were having little success.

Federal officials heard the concerns of roughly 150 envoys during a closed-door briefing on Thursday at the United Nations in New York City.

Some diplomats said the UN budget could be affected by the account closures.

The Wall Street Journal newspaper suggested in November that the banks' decisions were prompted by difficulties in adhering to federal money-laundering regulations affecting international transfers.

Regulations have been tightened since 9/11 in an effort to stop the flow of illegal foreign funds for crimes like financing terrorist acts.

'Big concern'

Speaking after the briefing, state department official Patrick Kennedy told reporters the missions had been given advice on "alternative approaches" they could take to obtain banking services.

He stressed that the banks' decisions were based on commercial reasons and "not because the bank is saying that the embassy of Xanadu or the mission of Shangri-La is engaged in some nefarious activity".

The US would continue its work with both diplomats and the banking industry, he added.

JP Morgan Chase, which handles many diplomatic accounts, did not specify a reason for terminating the services.

But reports suggest it may be because monitoring the accounts has become too costly.

In a letter dated 30 September, the bank told its diplomatic clients it had "made the decision to close its division that serves diplomatic and foreign government entities" and that its decision was not a reflection on how the envoys handled their accounts.

The closures at JP Morgan are scheduled to come into effect on 31 March and will affect mission accounts but not those of individual diplomats.

The BBC's Barbara Plett at the United Nations says this is a big concern for diplomats, with at least six telling reporters they had not yet been able to find another bank for their mission, even though they have been shopping around.

If they fail to do so by the end-of-March deadline, they will have trouble paying their employees and bills, our correspondent adds.

Arizona shootings: Funeral for victim Christina Green

President Obama asked the nation to live up to Christina's expectations

Christina Taylor Green, the nine-year-old killed in Saturday's shooting in Arizona, has been buried, marking the first of six such funerals.

Christina, whom President Barack Obama hailed on Wednesday night, was a top student, dancer and athlete.

She had hoped to meet Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a constituency event when she was killed and Ms Giffords and a dozen others were hurt.

Doctors say Ms Giffords is making "encouraging" progress in hospital.

They said they had begun intense physical therapy, and that she was able to lift her legs on command.

On Thursday, the Pima County Sheriff's Department, which responded to Saturday's shooting, released the audio of a seven-minute radio transmission between police officers and dispatchers in Tucson directly after the attack.

"Caller is reporting a shooting with a semi-automatic weapon. We have a caller who believes that Gabrielle Giffords was shot. It's a multiple-victim - it sounds like many people are shot," a dispatcher says in the recording.

The sound of screaming can be heard later in the transmission after one police officer arrives at the scene.

"He does not have the gun on him, but it is in the crowd somewhere," a voice on the recording says. "Start every ambulance we have out here."

Jared Loughner, 22, has been jailed pending trial over the attack in the city of Tucson. Six people were killed in the shooting, including Christina Green and a federal judge. More than a dozen were wounded.

Dressed as angels
Christina Taylor Green, in a handout photo Christina Taylor Green was a top student, dancer and athlete

Mourners at the St Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Tucson unfurled the largest flag recovered from Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City. The flag is a tribute to Christina, who was born that day in 2001.

Mourners in white, some dressed as angels, lined the road leading to the church in silence. Relatives and friends were seen entering and leaving the church amid heavy security.

Among those were dozens of Christina's classmates and boys wearing baseball outfits - Christina was a fan of the sport and was the granddaughter of former professional baseball player and manager Dallas Green.

The night before, President Barack Obama honoured Christina and other victims of the shootings, urging the US to heal divisions opened by "sharply polarised" political debate.

"Imagine," Mr Obama said at a public ceremony in Tucson, "here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation's future."


Start Quote

I want us to live up to her expectations”

End Quote President Barack Obama

A witness to Saturday's attack said Christina had been smiling broadly as she waited in line to meet Ms Giffords.

Christina had just been elected to the student council at Mesa Verde Elementary School, and her father has said her interest in politics was inspired by Mr Obama.

"President Obama and his campaign is where she started getting interested in politics, and at least to have heard him mention her makes me feel better," said Christina's father, John Green.

"She began her life on a tragedy, on 9/11, and her life was ended with a tragedy, here in Arizona."

Mr Obama called on the nation to honour her: "I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it."

Giffords' progress

Meanwhile, Ms Giffords's doctors said on Thursday morning that she had opened her eyes and appeared to be trying to focus her vision, "encouraging" signs she was recovering.

Ms Giffords is moving both legs and both arms, has opened both eyes and is responding to friends and family, doctors said.

"She's making the progress that we could hope for her," Dr Michael Lemole said.

In another development, a black bag containing ammunition, which police believe was discarded by Mr Loughner, was discovered on Thursday by a man walking his dog in the neighbourhood where the suspect lives.

The bag, which matches the description of one Mr Loughner was seen carrying by his father on Saturday morning, has been given to the FBI for testing, the police said.

Documents released by Pima Community College, where Mr Loughner attended school in the months before the attack, show a pattern of increasingly bizarre behaviour that troubled school officials and police.

The documents suggest Mr Loughner was prone to nonsensical outbursts and was confronted several times by police.

School officials described Mr Loughner's "dark personality" and some feared for their safety around him.

Afghan Taliban 'end' opposition to educating girls

Afghani female students attend Kabul university on July 6, 2010 in Kabul, Afghanistan Under the Taliban regime women were not allowed to be educated and were forced to wear the burka

The Taliban are ready to drop their ban on schooling girls in Afghanistan, the country's education minister has said.

Farooq Wardak told the UK's Times Educational Supplement a "cultural change" meant the Taliban were "no more opposing girls' education".

The Taliban - who are fighting the Kabul government - have made no public comment on the issue.

Afghan women were not allowed to work or get an education under the Taliban regime overthrown in 2001.

Making deals

Mr Wardak made his comments during the Education World Forum in London.

He told the TES: "What I am hearing at the very upper policy level of the Taliban is that they are no more opposing education and also girls' education.

"I hope, Inshallah (God willing), soon there will be a peaceful negotiation, a meaningful negotiation with our own opposition and that will not compromise at all the basic human rights and basic principles which have been guiding us to provide quality and balanced education to our people," the minister added.


Start Quote

The Taliban will never be ready for girls' education - in fact, they are fighting against that”

End Quote Marman Gulhar Kunar province MP

Across the country agreements have been struck at a local level between militants and village elders to allow girls and female teachers to return to schools, the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul reports.

Last October, Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed unofficial talks with Taliban leaders were under way in an attempt to end the bloody insurgency that has wrecked the troubled country for more close to a decade.

Mr Wardak's words suggest the negotiations have gone beyond issues like the release of prisoners to touch on areas of government policy, correspondents say.

However, the education minister admitted historical opposition to schooling extended beyond the Taliban to the "deepest pockets" of Afghan society.

"That is the reason that in many provinces of Afghanistan we do not have either male or female teacher," he said.

"During the Taliban era the percentage of girls of the one million students that we had was 0%. The percentage of female teachers was 0%. Today 38% of our students and 30% of our teachers are female."

Schools closed

Female MPs greeted with disbelief the Taliban's supposed softening of stance on schooling for girls.

Roshanak Wardak, a member of parliament from the central-eastern Afghan province of Wardak, told the BBC: "The Afghan government is saying that, but it's not true.

"I don't believe in this because in Wardak we have six Pashtun-dominated districts and all the girls' schools are closed and have never been open. There are only schools open in two Hazara-dominated districts."

Marman Gulhar, MP for the north-eastern province of Kunar, was also sceptical.

"This is not true and it will never happen," she told the BBC. "The Taliban will never be ready for that [girls' education].

"In fact they are fighting against that. The girls' schools are closed and still are closed."

Jimmy Wales says Wikipedia too complicated for many

Wikipedia boss Jimmy Wales: "We point to the results"


Wikipedia is too complicated for many people to modify despite billing itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", its founder has said.

Jimmy Wales told BBC News the site wants a new generation of contributors, including more women.

The online encyclopedia, which is 10 years old on 15 January, is the world's fifth most popular site.

It aims to increase its users from 400m to 1bn by 2015. But growth requires a new interface, said Mr Wales.

"We have to support our old power users because they build the site," he said. "But we also need to have a ramp for new users."

He said a lot of people were "afraid" to contribute to the site by the sometimes complicated code - known as Wiki mark-up - needed to format entries.


Start Quote

People thought: 'let's give the guy the money so he'll go away'”

End Quote Jimmy Wales

"If you click edit and you see some Wiki syntax and some bizarre table structure - a lot of people are literally afraid.

"They're good people and they don't want to break something.

As well as initiatives such as "adopt a user", that allows experienced Wikipedians to take a new user under their wing, he said his for-profit company Wikia had been doing a lot of work designing simple "what you see is what you get" editing tools.

"We're releasing all of that open source and Wikipedia will probably adopt some of that."

'Ugly mug'

However, Mr Wales said that one change he would not make would be to the site's financial model.

It currently operates as a not-for-profit organisation funded by donations from its users.

"We have just finished our fundraiser for the year - we raised $16m (£10m) faster than we have ever done it before," he said.


A short history of Wikipedia

  • Launched on 15 January 2001
  • First words were 'Hello World' written by founder Jimmy Wales
  • First edit on 16 January, followed by 1,000 articles in the first month
  • Now has 17 million articles in 270 languages, all written by volunteers
  • Billionth edit took place on 16 April 2010
  • Used by 400 million people every month
  • Claims to have 80,000 editors, although reports suggest that it has recently lost thousands; something Wikipedia disputes
  • Aims to grow to one billion users by 2015 with a focus on women and people in the developing world
  • Critics maintain that many entries are untrustworthy
  • But a disputed study has shown that for subjects such as science it comes as close as traditional encyclopedias

For many, Mr Wales' face will be familiar from banners that have been running on the site promoting the appeal.

Mr Wales said that he had tried to resist using his picture, but user testing had shown the organisation received more money by using his face.

"Those banners outperformed the other ones two-to-one," he said. "I think maybe because no-one wants to see my ugly mug anymore. People thought: 'let's give the guy the money so he'll go away'."

He said the donation model was "very stable" but admitted it did "constrain" what the site could do.

"We don't have a lot of money - we are running a website with 408m visitors on just over $20m," he said. "I think we're the most efficient charity there is by a long shot in terms of the number of people we impact for a small amount of money."

However, he said that he was not tempted to turn it into a commercial venture to pull in more money.

"If you look at pressures that commercial ventures would be under - suddenly there is a need to produce quarterly results, suddenly there is a need to bring in money."

He admitted the site could run as a non-profit supported by advertisements, but again said that there were no plans to make changes.

"Our view has always been we can always do that if we need to."

'Defensive move'

Mr Wales also used the interview to clear up the organisation's perceived association with the whistle-blowing organisation Wikileaks.

"The core of their work is not about Wiki at all - Wiki is a collaborative editing process, it's a group of people coming together to collaboratively write something. And what Wikileaks is doing is getting documents and leaking them."


The largest Wikipedia sites by language

  • English - 3.4m articles
  • German - 1.14m articles
  • French - 1.02m articles
  • Polish - 743,462 articles
  • Italian - 743,029 articles
  • Japanese - 713,759 articles

However, he said, many people get confused - including airport security, he said.

But the two still have a loose association.

Technically, the Wikia company has until this week legally owned domain names including wikileaks.net, wikileaks.com and wikileaks.us.

"We transferred the domains to them but they never completed the technical part," said Mr Wales. "All they needed to do was sign in and complete the transfer but they have never done it."

He said the domains had been registered "defensively" when Wikileaks launched in 2006.

"When they first launched they put out a press release that said the 'Wikipedia of secrets', which would have been a trademark violation.

"So someone in the office registered two or three domains."

He said that he regularly tries to prompt Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange to complete the transaction, to no avail.

"I saw someone else say that he's prone to saying 'I'm busy fighting superpowers' and that's exactly what he said to me."

Mr Wales said the domains would expire "this week".

"I'm not renewing them," said Mr Wales.

"We may ping them and say they are loose."

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan wins party primary

President Goodluck Jonathan (file photo) Goodluck Jonathan is the first president from Nigeria's oil-producing Delta region

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has won ruling party primaries, making him favourite in April's elections.

Mr Jonathan's main challenger was ex-Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who was supported by some northern powerbrokers.

The president won an overwhelming victory even though some delegates said the party should choose a northerner.

The People's Democratic Party candidate has won every poll since the end of military rule in 1999.

However, most of its victories have been marred by widespread fraud and violence.

Journalist Andrew Walker in Abuja says this is the first election Mr Jonathan has won.

As vice-president, he became leader after the death of elected President Umaru Yar'Adua in May last year.

And he also stepped up to take charge of his home state of Bayelsa when the governor was impeached on corruption charges.

Nevertheless, he won 2,736 votes compared to Mr Abubakar's 805. A third candidate, Sarah Jibril gained a single vote.


Start Quote

If rules can be thrown away by just anyone who feels he is powerful enough to do so, then it is an invitation to lawlessness and anarchy”

End Quote Atiku Abubakar Defeated PDP candidate

Correspondents say the margin of his victory was a huge surprise, with several central and northern states backing Mr Jonathan, a southerner.

"The People's Democratic Party has spoken with one strong voice," Mr Jonathan said in his acceptance speech, wearing a trademark fedora hat and black traditional robe.

"Our people have chosen the unity of our country above all other considerations."

A spokesman for Mr Abubakar complained of irregularities in the vote.

His supporters had accused Mr Jonathan's allies of of threatening to "fish out" anyone who votes against the president.

Electoral reform promise

There has been speculation that if he were defeated, he could leave the PDP, as he did before the 2007 vote, which he lost to Mr Yar'Adua.

Rival candidates

Goodluck Jonathan, 53

  • Christian from Bayelsa state in oil-rich Niger Delta
  • Took over as president after death of Umaru Yar'Adua last year
  • Former zoologist

Atiku Abubakar, 64

  • Muslim from Adamawa state in north
  • Vice-president 1999-2007
  • 2007, left PDP and ran for president for Action Congress
  • Wealthy businessman

However, after the result was announced, Mr Abubakar shook the president's hand and congratulated him on his victory.

The PDP has a tradition of alternating power between north and south after two terms of office but this was interrupted when Mr Jonathan succeeded Mr Yar'Adua when he died before his first term had ended.

Before the vote, Mr Atiku appealed to the party to retain that tradition.

"If rules can be thrown away by just anyone who feels he is powerful enough to do so, then it is an invitation to lawlessness and anarchy," Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.

He is the first president from Nigeria's southern, oil-producing Delta region.

Mr Jonathan has promised to introduce electoral reforms, but correspondents say it will be difficult to implement radical changes before April.

The main opposition candidates are former anti-corruption campaigner Nuhu Ribadu and Gen Muhammadu Buhari.

Pope paves way to beatification of John Paul

John Paul II on St Peter's Square, 18 May 2003 John Paul II suffered from Parkinson's Disease himself

Related stories

Pope Benedict XVI has formally approved a miracle attributed to his late predecessor, paving the way to John Paul II's beatification on 1 May.

The process of beatification, or declaring the late pontiff to be "blessed", is a crucial step towards making him a saint.

John Paul died in 2005 after a papacy of nearly 27 years.

The Vatican credits him with the miraculous cure of a nun said to have had Parkinson's Disease.

Church officials believe that the Polish pope, who himself suffered from the condition, interceded for the miraculous cure of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a Frenchwoman in her late forties.

She has said her illness inexplicably disappeared two months after John Paul II's death, after she and her fellow nuns had prayed to him.

Church-appointed doctors agreed that there was no medical explanation for the curing of the nun, although last year there were some doubts about the validity of the miracle.

A Polish newspaper said that a doctor who scrutinised the nun's case had concluded that she might have been suffering not from Parkinson's, but from a nervous disorder from which temporary recovery is medically possible.

In order for John Paul II to be canonised as a saint, a second miracle will have to be verified following the beatification.