.The French navy has captured 35 suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia in what French officials are hailing as the most successful mission since the European Union began monitoring the seas in 2008.
Four mother ships and six smaller boats have been seized over three days. .
The EU’s mission has focused on the Gulf of Aden – one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.
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Jurisdiction over the suspects remains unclear, and there have been renewed calls for an international tribunal to be set up
.France legend Zinedine Zidane says he would “rather die” than apologise to Marco Materazzi for his infamous headbut of the Italian defender in the 2006 World Cup final.
“I will ask forgiveness from football, from supporters, from the team,” he told Spain’s El Pais newspaper. It won’t change anything, but I’m asking for your forgiveness.
“After the match, I entered the dressing room and I told them ‘I’m sorry. Never, never.’
“But as for him (Materazzi) I cannot…. it would be dishonourable. I would rather die..
“A lot of things happen on the pitch,” he said.”
After a verbal altercation, Zidane was sent off for headbutting Materazzi during the World Cup final in Berlin, which France eventually lost in a penalty shoot-out. But in this case I couldn’t contain myself. . More than once they have insulted my mother and I said nothing.
“It’s not an excuse, but my mother was ill, she was in hospital.. But in this case.”
Zidane retired from professional football after the tournament and now works as an advisor to Real Madrid chairman Florentino Perez..
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.A storm that killed at least 47 people in France on the weekend has been officially declared a national disaster.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has visited the storm-battered Atlantic coast, where most of the storm’s victims drowned. . Others were killed by falling buildings or trees.
France’s Prime Minister Francois Fillon declared the storm a national disaster and said money would be allocated to help communities rebuild.
The Atlantic storm hit the western coasts of France, Portugal and Spain on Sunday, then swept towards Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
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He said the focus would now turn to protecting those left homeless and those threatened by rising waters
.Al Qaeda’s North African wing has released French hostage Pierre Camatte after Mali freed four Islamist prisoners in response to an Al Qaeda threat to kill him.
“We confirm the liberation of Pierre Camatte,” Malian presidency spokesperson Seydou Cissouma told state radio.
Mali freed four Islamist prisoners last week after Al Qaeda threatened to kill Mr Camatte unless they were released.
He said Mr Camatte, kidnapped in Mali in November, was in the hands of Malian authorities.
Algerian media said two of the freed men were Algerian.
Their release prompted Algeria to recall its ambassador to Mali earlier on Tuesday in protest.
He said he had thanked Malian president Amadou Toumani Toure for his handling of the crisis and pledged French support in the struggle against terrorism. .
The group has waged a campaign of suicide bombings and ambushes in Algeria, but in the past few years has shifted a large part of its activities south to the Sahara desert.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has also claimed responsibility for the abduction of three Spaniards and an Italian couple.
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.A probe has strongly criticised cross-Channel train operator Eurostar for failing to prepare its trains to cope with winter weather that led to breakdowns and mass disruption in December.
Eurostar also had “no plan in place” to deal with the chaos created when five trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel with more than 2,000 passengers aboard in the busy pre-Christmas period.
Passengers stuck on the trains endured overflowing toilets and darkness and stuffy conditions for hours on end, the report said, adding that “provision of information to customers was inadequate”.
The maintenance of the trains came in for particular criticism – one of the broken-down trains had no snow screens on its power cars allowing a fine form of snow to cause the electrical systems to fail.
The poor quality of information offered to passengers waiting to take cancelled or delayed trains was also highlighted.
Services were cancelled and disrupted following the breakdowns, throwing the travel plans of thousands of passengers trying to travel between London and Paris and Brussels into disarray.
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The study, by former train company boss Christopher Garnett and French civil engineer Claude Gressier, said the weather in northern France on December 18 was “extremely severe with heavy snowfall”.. .
The first train to break down in the tunnel was recovered “quickly” but “four further trains then broke down in rapid succession and passengers from two of them had to be evacuated onto Eurotunnel passenger shuttles inside the tunnel. found that Eurostar trains had not undergone sufficient winter weather preparations to withstand these conditions and that maintenance procedures should be revised,” it read.
While the evacuations of trains inside the tunnel were carried out “safely and efficiently”, the report highlighted concerns about conditions in the trains after they lost air conditioning and lighting.
“This was the first time this had happened in 15 years of operation,” the review said.
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Eurostar says it will spend more than 30 million pounds ($53 million) upgrading its infrastructure and equipment
.French climber Alain Robert, known as Spiderman for his death-defying antics, has set his sights on scaling Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower, a report said.
The Gulf emirate of Dubai opened the glistening 828 metre concrete, glass and steel skyscraper on January 4 this year.
“I’ll have to do it …
“I know the people of Dubai, they are interested [in seeing me climb the skyscraper]. maybe between January and April 2011,” Mr Robert was quoted as saying by Malaysia’s official Bernama news agency.”
The tower, the tallest in the world, was named in honour of the Abu Dhabi leader whose billions of dollars bailed out Dubai from its financial crisis last year.
He has climbed skyscrapers including the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower and Taipei 101, according to his website.
Mr Robert, 47, was in Malaysia to receive an award for his extraordinary feats in scaling tall buildings.
“The problem in Dubai is the hot weather [of] up to 40 degrees Celsius,” he said.
He admitted that climbing the Dubai tower will be a tough mission because of the Middle Eastern heat. For me, climbing is as important as eating and breathing.
“My biggest fear is to waste my time on Earth. Climbing skyscrapers is my lifetime love and passion. .
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.Northern Europe is bracing for what is expected to be the coldest day yet of the big freeze affecting the region.
Conditions have left many people dead and another Eurostar train has been stranded in the Channel Tunnel. .
The Arctic freeze has seen temperatures in central Sweden plunge to between minus 30 and minus 40 degrees Celsius, the coldest weather in more than 25 years.
In Germany, at least nine homeless men have frozen to death.
Around 10,000 schools shut down in Britain and will not reopen until well into next week.
Gas supplies are running low in the UK where the national grid has had to start rationing supplies of energy.
One Eurostar train arrived in London two hours late after breaking down in the Channel Tunnel, while four others were cancelled after snow got into the engines.
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The average weather in Britain recently has been only 2 degrees warmer than the North Pole
.Revellers have started ringing in the New Year across the globe with spectacular fireworks displays and massive parties hosted by world capitals against a backdrop of tightened security.
Party-goers in the South Pacific were the first to raise their glasses to 2010, leading the world into a new decade after one scarred by war, terrorist attacks, natural disaster and financial turmoil.5 million people crowded the Sydney Harbour foreshore to watch a vast array of fireworks burst into the night sky at midnight, launched from the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and four barges on the water.
In Australia, about 1.
Paris’s Eiffel Tower was ready to be transformed into a multicoloured light show for its party while in Berlin more than 1 million revellers were expected on the boulevard leading to the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of German unity, with live bands and DJs to crank up the party.
Thousands of people crammed into Hong Kong’s harbour, where 9,000 fireworks were unleashed in a display that lasted close toly five minutes, shot off from the city’s tallest skyscraper as well as other buildings
But in Thailand, police banned fireworks after a New Year’s Eve blaze at a Bangkok nightclub a year ago killed 65 people.
In New York, a downpour of confetti was to mark midnight at a traditional mass celebration in Times Square in the heart of Manhattan.
Celebrations in Britain centred on the London Eye, the giant wheel across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the world’s most famous clock.
“It will be a full fledged deployment of resources,” city police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
But after security jitters rekindled by a Christmas Day bomb plot against a passenger jet claimed by Al Qaeda, undercover police, surveillance cameras and radiation and biological detection equipment were to monitor the crowds.”
In Finland, a lone gunman chose the last day of the year to kill four people in a rampage in a shopping mall. “We assume here that New York is the number one terrorist target in America.
The US embassy in Indonesia said meanwhile it had received a warning of a possible attack on the resort island of Bali, the scene of multiple bombings targeting Westerners, but local authorities denied knowledge of any alert. He also murdered a former girlfriend and was later found dead himself. .
In Pakistan, where the Taliban’s bloody campaign rebounded in 2009, spirits were dampened in the city of Karachi by a deadly suicide attack during a holy Shiite Muslim ceremony on Monday that killed 43 people.
For Cyprus, New Year’s Eve was the last chance to smoke in pubs, clubs and cafes, with new anti-smoking law in force from January 1.
In neighbouring Afghanistan, soldiers maintained their alert after two deadly militant attacks claimed the lives of eight Americans and five Canadians, while two French journalists were reported kidnapped by Taliban.
“New Year’s Day, the 1st of January 2010, marks the beginning of the most important year in our country since 1994,” Zuma said.
And in South Africa, President Jacob Zuma used his New Year message to call for unity for the 2010 football World Cup – the first ever to be held in Africa. “We have to put the culture of negativity behind us.
“It must be the year in which we work together to make the Soccer World Cup the biggest turning point in the marketing of our country,” he said.
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New Year’s Eve also presented much of the world with a blue moon – the second full moon appearing in a calendar month – for only the second time in close toly two decades
.Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday has been released from a Los Angeles hospital where he underwent a back operation earlier this month, his publicists said.
“The doctors judged that Johnny Hallyday’s current state of health has improved and justifies a return home to his family while he continues to receive the medical treatment he needs,” they said.
He will spend Christmas at his home in Los Angeles with his wife Laeticia and two daughters.
He has begun legal action to determine whether the surgeon who performed the operation in Paris was at fault and earlier this week submitted a letter to French judges declaring that he had “come close to death”.
Hallyday, 66, who had been due to resume a concert tour in January, was admitted to the Cedars-Sinai hospital on December 7 suffering complications after an earlier operation in Paris.
His health problems have forced the cancellation of the remainder of his concert tour, prompting widespread speculation about the likely financial impact for insurers and promoters.
Hallyday, one of France’s most popular entertainers in a career spanning almost 50 years, is particularly famous for his energetic live performances.
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.Eurostar passenger train services linking Britain to continental Europe will be suspended for a third day on Monday, the company said, after a series of trains broke down due to the freezing weather.
Eurostar says it will not restart services until the source of the breakdowns – which left at least five trains stranded in the tunnel between England and France – has been identified and fixed.
Eurostar is offering passengers replacement tickets and compensation after 2,000 people spent hours trapped in the tunnel with limited food, water or fresh air. .
Eurostar’s commercial director Nick Mercer said test trains had been running on Sunday with engineers trying to work out what was making them break down.
An investigation is underway into employees’ handling of the crisis after many complaints from passengers they did not appear to know what to do.
Mercer said screens and shields meant to stop snow getting into the electrics had failed and needed to be improved.
They had made modifications to the trains, which will be tested on Monday to ensure they are effective, he said. The engineers believe they’ve found the cause,” he told BBC television.
“The test trains did run satisfactorily.
The big temperature change between the open air and the warm tunnels has also been blamed for the breakdowns.
The weather conditions in northern France “caused snow to be ingested into the trains in a way that’s never happened before,” he said.