The unions are protesting a draft law that will require individual aviation workers to give 48 hours notice before taking strike action.

The bill was approved by France’s lower house last week and is being studied in the Senate.

It was unclear how much disruption the strike will cause as unions have not provided details about what form it will take, but union leaders called for nationwide action that would affect all French airlines.

Air France has already announced that passengers with tickets booked for February 6-9 can reschedule without charge.

It nevertheless said it would be able to run more than 80 percent of its short- and medium-haul flights and more than 85 percent of its long haul flights.

Source:  http://news.mylaunchpad.com.my/Home/Article?Key=9fc9c89d-7ab2-43a2-9a6a-0c2ab8faf8e8

People have been found dead on the streets in some countries, while thousands have been trapped in mountain villages in Serbia. Even Rome was dusted in snow, and Venice’s canals started freezing over.

In the last seven days, a total of 222 people have died from the cold weather, according to an AFP tally, with Ukraine suffering the heaviest toll.

The lowest temperatures recorded were in the southwest of the Czech Republic, where the mercury dropped as low as minus 38.1 degrees Celsius (minus 36.5 Fahrenheit) overnight.

The EU executive said vital Russian gas deliveries had fallen in nine countries, with the Russian giant Gazprom invoking flexibility clauses as it also braves a cold snap. Supplies fell 30 percent in Austria and 24 percent in Italy.

Ukraine’s emergencies ministry raised the death toll substantially to 101, of whom 64 died on the streets, from 63 previously.

Almost 1,600 people have requested medical attention for frostbite and hypothermia and thousands have flocked to temporary shelters.

The ferocious temperatures killed eight more people over the last 24 hours in Poland, bringing the death toll to 37 since the deep freeze began a week ago, police said.

Temperatures plunged to minus 35 Celsius in some areas of Poland, while in Bulgaria parts of the River Danube have frozen over.

Elsewhere in Bulgaria, another six people were found dead from the cold, bringing the overall tally to 16 in the last week, according to local media.

Most of the dead in the European Union’s poorest country were villagers found frozen to death on the side of the road or in their unheated homes, the reports said.

More than 1,000 Bulgarian schools remained closed for a third day amid fresh snowfalls and piercing winds in the northeast.

In neighbouring Romania two more people died, bringing the overall toll to 24, and hundreds of school remained closed.

In Rome, residents experienced only their second day of snow in 15 years, with white flakes covering palm trees, ancient Roman ruins and Baroque churches across the capital.

Up to five centimetres (two inches) of snow fell in some districts and ancient monuments like the Colosseum were closed to visitors for fear of damage to the structure.

Temperatures in the Alpine region of Piedmont in northern Italy went as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius and drivers were advised to avoid regions in the centre of the country due to heavy snowfall and resulting traffic problems.

Canals in Venice, where temperatures fell as low as minus 5 Celsius, started freezing. However trains resumed normal service across the country except in and around Bologna and on a local line near Rome after days of delays.

Three people have died due to the extreme weather in recent days, including a homeless man found in Milan on Thursday.

Estonia and France announced their first casualties of the freeze, with a man found frozen to death on a street in Tallin and an 82-year-old man suffering from Alzheimer’s dying of hypothermia in the eastern French village of Lemberg after wandering out of his home in pyjamas.

Rescuers in Serbia ploughed through snowdrifts to get food, supplies and aid to residents of mountain villages, where thousands of people have been trapped.

“To help a woman who needed to reach a hospital we were breaking through two-metre (six-foot) snow drifts, which lasted for two and a half hours,” said Vedran Taskovic, a rescuer in the southeastern town of Vranje.

“Eventually, we had to make a sleigh of nylon bags to get her to the road, as she couldn’t walk.”

Swathes of Britain were bracing for snow after temperatures plunged to minus 11 degrees Celsius overnight in some areas, with authorities warning that the cold could catch people off-guard after a warmer-than-normal winter so far.

The first snow hit Belgium on Friday causing more than 1,100 kilometres (690 miles) of traffic jams on roads and highways, according to automobile associations. The last record was 948 kilometres registered in February 2010.

The French, who have cranked up their heating systems were on Monday expected to break an all time power consumption record set in 2010, with consumers being asked in some regions to turn off appliances for at least four hours a day to avoid blackouts.

The cold snap has also killed people in the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Austria and Greece.

Source:  http://news.mylaunchpad.com.my/World/Europe/Article?Key=d74bff12-6088-428a-bab3-53a911067e42

The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the authenticity of the nearly 17-minute recording posted on YouTube and other sites and said it was “intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained.

“A criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible,” the FBI said in a statement.

Along with the audio recording, Anonymous also posted online the email invitation from an FBI agent setting up the call for January 17.

Source:  http://www.france24.com/en/20120203-anonymous-posts-audio-fbi-scotland-yard-call

The Hutchison deal has been long in the works from the heavily indebted France Telecom, which holds 35 percent of the Austrian company. Buyout firm Mid Europa Partners holds the other 65 percent.

In a bid to satisfy competition regulators, Hutchison will in turn sell assets including wireless spectrum and transmitters worth 390 million euros to rival operator A1, which is part of Telekom Austria.

Hutchison, which is already active in Austria with its “3″ brand, will also offload Orange Austria’s cheap-rate affiliate Yesss!, according to a statement from Orange.

But the deal, which will create a company with 3.5 million customers, could still attract close scrutiny from European Union authorities, Austrian media have reported.

A1 is the dominant mobile company in Austria with 41 percent of market share, followed by Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile Austria with about 31 percent.

Hutchison’s 3 trails far behind with a market share of just under 10 percent, but will more than double that with the Orange Austria acquisition.

The acquirer is part of the Hutchison Whampoa conglomerate controlled by Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing, and via the 3 brand it operates in nine mobile markets including Australia, Britain and Italy.

The sale marks the latest effort by the formerly state-run France Telecom to raise cash by selling non-core assets. It recently offloaded its Swiss mobile unit to private equity group Apax Partners for 1.6 billion euros.

Analysts expect the French operator to announce further sell-offs in the Middle East and Africa.

Source:  http://www.france24.com/en/20120203-france-telecom-sells-orange-austria-hk-group

Strong gains in local shares, mirroring global equities, and the euro’s sharp climb buoyed the rupee, traders said.

Robust interest from foreign investors at the debt limit auction on Wednesday added to the sanguine outlook on dollar inflows and boosted the local currency, they said.

The enhanced $10 billion debt limit for foreign institutional investors (FIIs) received bids worth $14 billion, four market sources said on Wednesday.

The partially convertible rupee ended at 51.46/47 per dollar, after gaining as much as 51.40 — a level last seen on November 18 — in early trade. It had closed at 52.20/21 on Wednesday.

The rupee had last witnessed such a sharp rise on 18 May, 2009, when it climbed more than 3 percent on the back of a 17-percent surge in local equities, after the re-election of the Congress party-led ruling coalition.

The US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Britain, Japan and Switzerland said on Wednesday they would lower the cost of existing dollar swap lines by 50 basis points from December 5, and arrange bilateral swaps to provide liquidity for other currencies.

Source:  http://www.firstpost.com/investing/rupee-posts-biggest-1-day-gain-in-more-than-2-yrs-145990.html

Analysts expect that a slowdown in job creation took place in January after December’s surge in holiday hiring, so that the Labor Department will report no improvement in the unemployment rate — 8.5 percent — when it releases its data for the month.

Underpinning that will likely be a fall in the net number of jobs added to the economy, to 155,000 from 200,000 in December, economists forecast.

The United States entered 2012 facing prospects of slow economic growth for some time to come, too slow to make a meaningful dent in stubbornly high unemployment — the pace of job creation has remained too sluggish to offset population growth.

That keeps ongoing joblessness the biggest challenge to President Barack Obama’s administration and his effort to be reelected in November.

But the January jobs market reading coming out Friday might not be a good indication of the overall trend, say analysts.

They warn that a number of technical issues, including seasonal layoffs, unseasonably warm weather, and benchmark revisions, could skew the numbers.

“There will be a break in the unemployment rate data series that will make January a stand-alone figure, not comparable to December or prior periods,” said Nomura analyst Ellen Zentner.

There have been signs of improvement under way in the labor market. The jobless rate has trended steadily downward from 9.1 percent in August to 8.5 percent last month.

Thursday’s Labor Department report on weekly new claims for unemployment benefits, an indicator of the pace of layoffs, showed the steady improvement as well.

The four-week moving average, which smooths out the volatile weekly data, fell for the fourth straight week and was 12 percent lower than one year ago. The week’s figure of initial claims, at 367,000, was also below the trend.

Yet a separate report Thursday showed planned layoffs on the rise last month.

Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said businesses in January announced plans to cut 53,486 jobs from their payrolls, the highest number since July. The cuts are mainly from the retail and finance sectors.

And a report from payrolls firm ADP on Wednesday showed business hiring fell by 42 percent in January after a December surge, worse than analysts expected.

Challenger said however that it was “not unusual to see a job-cut surge to start the year.”

“Historically, January is the heaviest job-cut month, averaging 101,084 announced layoffs between 1993 and 2011.”

“Progress, in both initial jobless claims and the overall labor market, has been frustratingly slow and uneven, albeit headed in the right direction — fewer job losses and net hiring,” said Sara Kline at Moody’s Analytics.

But, she warned, “the anemic pace of improvement is not likely to give way to accelerating growth in the coming months.”

RDQ Economics analysts noted the bright side, saying “though layoff announcements have run ahead of year-ago levels in the last two months, planned job cuts remain at historically low levels.”

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, in testimony to Congress Thursday, reiterated concerns about persistently high unemployment, and especially the massive number of people jobless for long periods, which economists warn makes it increasingly difficult to find new employment.

More than 40 percent of the 13 million unemployed have been jobless for more than six months, Bernanke said.

“We still have a long way to go before the labor market can be said to be operating normally,” he told the House of Representatives budget committee.

Source:  http://www.france24.com/en/20120202-data-point-frail-recovery-us-jobs-market

The pills, about half of which were the brand name Lo/Ovral-28 and the other half were generic norgestrel and ethinyl estradiol tablets, may be improperly arranged so that inactive pills are taken at the wrong time in the monthly cycle.

“An investigation by Pfizer found that some blister packs may contain an inexact count of inert or active ingredient tablets and that the tablets may be out of sequence,” Pfizer said in a statement.

“As a result of this packaging error, the daily regimen for these oral contraceptives may be incorrect and could leave women without adequate contraception, and at risk for unintended pregnancy.”

The pills were manufactured and packaged by Pfizer in New York state and commercialized by Akrimax Rx Products under the Akrimax brand name in the United States.

Each packet is supposed to contain 21 active tablets and seven inactive pills.

“The cause of the inexact package counts has been identified and corrected,” Pfizer spokeswoman Grace Ann Arnold told AFP.

She described the problem as a “mechanical and operator visual inspection systems failure on the packaging line.”

Patients who have been taking the affected lot numbers, posted on the US Food and Drug Administration website, should notify their physician, return the product to the pharmacy and begin using a back-up form of non-hormonal birth control right away, Pfizer said.

Source: http://www.france24.com/en/20120201-pfizer-recalls-1-million-packets-us-birth-control-pills

The camp of the PPRD and its allied parties captured an aboslute majority of about 260 seats on the 500-seat National Assembly while the opposition won about 110 seats, according to figures released by the electoral commission.

The rest are held by a number of very small parties who are not in official alliance with either camp. About 100 parties will be represented in the new parliament, many with just one or two seats.

Kabila’s party obtained 62 seats, the biggest number — down from 111 in 2006 elections.

Opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), which had boycotted the 2006 polls, followed with 41 seats.

The results do not include 17 seats in seven voting districts where the electoral commission had annulled the vote due to election violence.

Tshisekedi had finished second to Kabila in presidential elections also held on November 28. He has denounced widespread fraud in both the presidential and parliamentary polls.

Foreign and Congolese observer teams also reported irregularities.

Kabila has been in power since January 2001.

Source: http://www.france24.com/en/20120202-dr-congo-leaders-camp-wins-parliament-majority

Although US commanders had already indicated a move towards an advisory mission in coming months, Panetta’s comments marked the first time the US administration had forecast American and allied troops could end their combat operations by the second half of next year.

“Hopefully by the mid-to-latter part of 2013, we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a train, advise and assist role,” Panetta told reporters aboard his plane en route to a NATO meeting in Brussels.

With President Barack Obama facing a tough re-election campaign, the Pentagon chief’s remarks represented the strongest signal yet that the White House wants to wrap up the wars it inherited from the previous administration, after having overseen the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq in December.

Obama took a similar approach in Iraq before the pullout there, declaring an end to the combat mission while the Pentagon renamed units as “advise and assist” brigades.

Panetta portrayed the approach as in keeping with a gradual NATO plan adopted in Lisbon in November 2010, which calls for handing over security duties to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

Despite the goal of ending the combat mission next year, the United States had no plans to move up the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of American and coalition forces, Panetta said.

The NATO alliance had agreed on the 2014 timeline “and I think we ought to stick with that,” he said.

As for stepping back from a combat role, Panetta said: “Everybody assumed that there would come a time, as we move towards the end of 2014, that we would be transitioning that role.”

He added: “And that’s basically what…we did in Iraq. And it’s what we’re going to try to do in Afghanistan.”

After a decade of war, Washington has vowed to withdraw combat forces battling the Taliban by the end of 2014 but has left the door open to a follow-on force focused on training, depending on the outcome of negotiations with the Afghan government.

Panetta said such a future force could include a counter-terrorism mission to strike extremists, along with standard training efforts.

He said Washington wanted to see all the NATO allies in Afghanistan — including France — “respect” the NATO timeline.

“We all went in here together and we’ll all go out together, but we have to do it on the basis of a strong alliance and a strong commitment that was made in Lisbon,” said Panetta, who was due to meet NATO defense ministers on Thursday.

He said 2013 would be a “crucial” year for the final transfer of remaining areas to Afghan security forces and “2014 becomes a year of consolidating the transition.”

It was unclear how the planned shift from combat to a mainly advisory role would affect US troop levels.

With nearly 90,000 US troops now in Afghanistan, Panetta said that “no decision has been made with regards to the level of forces we’ll have in 2013.”

By the end of September, the number of US troops is due to drop to 68,000, following the scheduled withdrawal of a “surge force” that deployed in 2010.

The Pentagon chief sought to play down the effect of last month’s surprise announcement from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to withdraw French combat forces in 2013, a year earlier than planned under the NATO strategy.

“With regards to France, I understand why they made their decision,” he said.

Despite the French withdrawal plans, he said he was “pleased” that Paris had indicated it would retain a longer-term military presence with troops training and advising Afghan forces.

A senior US defense official told reporters it was possible that there was no serious gap between the French stance and NATO’s timeline, depending on the precise details of what Paris planned.

“I think the discussions will reveal whether there’s a serious difference or not,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Source: http://www.france24.com/en/20120202-us-end-combat-role-afghanistan-2013

Web designer Mathew Hollingsworth, 28, is launching a civil claim in the Melbourne Magistrates Court seeking Aus$1,575 (US$1,668) for repairs to his hi-tech bicycle plus damages, interest and costs.

His lawyer George Defteros told Melbourne local radio that Warne’s very public outburst on Twitter about the incident was partly why his client decided to take action.

“I think in a way it was brought on by Twitter more than anything else,” he said.

“There’s an incident and then all of a sudden it’s out there in the public domain very, very quickly.

“I’m not saying that anyone’s at fault for this coming out the way it has but, be that as it may, it has come out so we want to put our version of events across really.”

Hollingsworth alleges Warne drove his sports car into him after a robust exchange of words in peak-hour traffic in Melbourne on January 17.

The Herald Sun newspaper said that in a statutory declaration, Hollingsworth claimed Warne lurched his car forward striking him on the leg.

“Once I was on the footpath, a young brunette woman in business clothing approached me offering assistance and asked, ‘Are you okay? Are you going to follow it up? I have the rego (registration),” he said in the declaration.

“I said, ‘No, it should be okay. It was Shane Warne.’ She seemed as surprised as me.”

Warne has denied any wrongdoing, using a series of Tweets on the evening of the incident to detail his version of events and lash out at “antagonistic” cyclists.

The spin king claimed a cyclist grabbed on to the back of his car as he headed home from a training session at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Then at a change of traffic lights, he alleged the man rode past and hit the bonnet with his hand. He said the bike rider then pulled up in front of his car, halting traffic, and abused him.

Warne, 42, is one of Australia’s greatest cricketers and has come out of retirement to play with the Melbourne Stars in Australia’s Twenty20 Big Bash League.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/sk/news?slug=afp-cricket_aus_warne_20120131