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June 13 (Reuters) – Exiled former Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev denied on Sunday any involvement in a wave of ethnic violence in the south of Kyrgyzstan that has killed at least 82 people.
Bakiyev said in a statement that reports of his involvement were “shameless lies” and that the interim government that replaced him after an uprising in April were proving incapable of quelling the unrest.
(Reporting by Andrei Makhovsky; Writing by Conor Humphries;
June 10 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s main militant group said its fighters clashed with soldiers in the creeks of Delta state in the oil-producing Niger Delta on Thursday, the first report of such unrest in the OPEC member nation in months.
“There was a bloody confrontation at about 0030 hours… between our fighters and men of the military Joint Task Force after one of our patrols ran into two gunboats of the JTF at Ogulagha in Delta state,” the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in a statement emailed to media.
“A firefight ensued which lasted about 30 minutes,” it said.
It was not immediately possible to get comment from the military or any independent confirmation of a firefight. (For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: af.reuters.com/ ) (Reporting by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Jon Boyle)
TOKYO, June 10 (Reuters) – Japan’s Brother Industries Ltd (6448.T) said it has restarted production at two industrial sewing machine factories in China on Thursday after a strike had forced it to halt output for about one week.
About 900 workers at the two plants in Xian launched the strike on June 3 seeking better pay and improved working conditions, halting production through Wednesday, Brother spokeswoman Mika Oshima said.
The plants restarted production on Thursday morning but a representative for the workers is still in negotiations with management on pay and conditions, Oshima said.
Brother gets the bulk of its sales from printers and other office equipment. Industrial sewing machines accounted for about 4 percent of its revenues in the past business year.
Honda Motor Co’s (7267.T) output in China has been hampered by a series of strikes at its suppliers, prompting concerns that unrest among workers in the world’s manufacturing hub is spreading. [ID:nTOE65801O]
Shares in Brother closed up 0.3 percent at 995 yen, underperforming a 1.1 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei average .N225. (Reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
BANGKOK, June 10 (Reuters) – Consumer confidence in Thailand rose in May as tension eased after the end of disruptive political protests in the capital, with strong GDP data released during the month also providing a boost.
The consumer confidence index from the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce rose to 67.6 in May after plunging a record 2.6 points to 67.2 in April because of political violence. April’s reading was the lowest since July 2009.
“Confidence rose for the first time in four months as the political situation eased. It is really because of the story of hope,” university economist Thanavath Phonvichai told a news conference on Thursday.
The government has announced a reconciliation plan and Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is due to unveil details later on Thursday.
The protesters were mainly poorer Thais, supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was ousted in a military coup in 2006.
The survey was conducted after the May 19 crackdown by the military that ended nine weeks of unrest. In contrast, the April poll was conducted after deadly clashes between troops and protesters on April 10, after which tension escalated.
Confidence in May was also boosted by strong economic growth in the first quarter of 2010. Data on May 24 showed GDP grew 3.8 percent from the previous quarter and 12 percent from a year before, when Thailand was going through a brief recession.
However, the unrest has hit tourism and consumption, and some economists said the economy could contract in April-June from the first quarter. [ID:nSGE657032]
DEAD AND INJURED
Confidence hit a 21-month high of 71.9 in January as the economy recovered but then slipped as political tension built up. More than 89 people were killed during the anti-government protests from mid-March and nearly 2,000 injured.
Sentiment should improve as long as the political situation remains calm, the university said, adding an index that projects confidence over the next six months also rose for the first time in four months in May, reaching 74.1 after 73.0 in April.
“The higher index shows that consumers are feeling better now the protest is over,” said Thammarat Kittisiripat, an economist at Tisco Securities.
“That should help boost spending. Although the outlook for the political problem is not clear yet, I still believe that our economic fundamentals remain strong,” he added.
Life in the capital is back to normal three weeks after the crackdown, and the government has announced relief measures to help firms and small operators hit by the violence.
Several countries, including Britain and Australia, have eased their travel warnings for Thailand, which should help bring back tourists over time. Tourism accounts for 6 percent of GDP and employs at least 15 percent of the workforce.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva remains optimistic that economic growth could be close to 6 percent this year. [ID:nSGE65501I]. The state planning agency, the NESDB, which compiles GDP data, forecasts 3.5 to 4.5 percent. ($32.62 Baht) (Additional reporting by Arada Kultawanich; Editing by Alan Raybould)
ATHENS, June 1 (Reuters) – Greek betting group OPAP’s (OPAr.AT) sales agents are threatening to strike over tax changes and exclusivity rules on June 11 and 12, the first two days of soccer’s World Cup, their head said on Tuesday.
The move highlights unrest triggered by Greece’s drastic belt-tightening to counter a debt crisis that has shaken the euro zone and undermined Europe’s single currency.
OPAP, which has a monopoly on sports betting and lotteries in the country until 2020, is 34 percent owned by the state. Its 5,000 Greek agents are the only ones allowed to sell its products.
Under a new tax regime decided as part of reforms aimed at plugging Greece’s fiscal gap, OPAP’s agents will now be taxed on their profits instead of paying a flat rate on their revenues. Agents say this will hurt their business.
They also demand fast-track parliamentary approval of an agreement signed with OPAP which will continue to bind the firm to its agents.
“We are planning a 48-hour strike during the World Cup,” the head of OPAP’s agents, Kyriakos Toptsidis, told Reuters.
“But if the two issues have moved forward by June 11, we might decide to call off the strike as a gesture of good will to find a way out,” he added.
The agents walked off their job during the Champions League soccer final in May in a strike expected to have cost OPAP up to 17 million euros ($20.83 million) in lost revenue. The betting firm made 5.44 billion euros in revenues in 2009. (Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Michael Shields)
Bangkok, May 27 (DPA) The battle between the Thai government and supporters of coup-ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has moved off the streets and into the courts, officials said Thursday.
A week after Thai troops and armoured vehicles broke up a two-month demonstration by Thaksin supporters in the heart of Bangkok, the government has initiated a multi-pronged legal offensive against the former premier and his backers.
‘In fact, it’s a good sign to have legal battles instead of street battles,’ government spokesman Panithan Wattanayankorn said Thursday. ‘It shows the system is functioning again.’
Thai police were expected to formally seek the help of Interpol next week to arrest and extradite Thaksin to face a charge of terrorism for his alleged role in financing and organising the protests. Unrest surrounding the demonstrations resulted in 88 deaths and 1,885 injuries.
Thaksin’s lawyers filed an appeal Wednesday, seeking to revoke an arrest warrant issued against him on terrorism charges the day before.
In his first published reaction to the terrorism charge, Thaksin said in an interview with the Australian public broadcaster ABC Thursday that he did not bankroll the so-called red-shirt rebellion and Interpol should ignore the warrant for his arrest.
‘We never, we never, engage in violence,’ Thaksin said. ‘This (charge) is clearly politically motivated, and there is no ground. …Interpol always found out that the information that the Thai government give is unreliable and is politically motivated.’
Thaksin denied that protesters had set the fires that gutted several major buildings in Bangkok May 19, saying they did not have the technical capabilities to do so.
Thaksin was removed from office in 2006 by a bloodless army coup and jumped bail after he was charged and later convicted of abuse of power by a Thai court. He is currently living in self-imposed exile in the tiny European country of Montenegro.
Panithan admitted the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva faces an uphill battle in restoring public confidence after the violence in Bangkok.
He said an independent panel would be convened to investigate the upheaval.
In addition, Panithan said legal cases were due to be submitted next month against anti-Thaksin ‘yellow shirt’ protesters who closed down Bangkok’s two international airports in late 2008.
Failure to prosecute those protesters, who support Abhisit’s government, was one of the main criticisms made by the pro-Thaksin red shirts, who argued that a double standard was being applied.
Panithan said the government was working hard to counter rumours that have proliferated in the bitterness that has followed the Bangkok street battles.
He said reports that nine bodies had been found last week in the basement of the gutted Central World shopping centre were false.
The spokesman also denied rumours that Arisman Phongruangrong, a key leader of the anti-government protest who disappeared last week, had been killed by security forces.
‘Arisman is still at large,’ Panithan said. ‘We can’t confirm his whereabouts. We are worried about his safety too. If something happened to him, then the blame would come to us.’
Two bombs exploded in quick succession in Thailand’s restive Muslim south on Wednesday, killing two people and wounding at least 28, police said.
The first bomb, hidden in a motorcycle, exploded near a car showroom in Yala province, 1,100 km (680 miles) south of Bangkok, police said. As rescue workers and bomb squads arrived at the scene, the second bomb exploded in a street 30 metres away.
More than 3,900 people, both Buddhists and Muslims, have been killed in six years of unrest in the largely Muslim, rubber-rich region bordering Malaysia.
Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces were part of an independent sultanate known as Patani until annexed in 1909 by predominantly Buddhist Thailand.
The attackers, believed to be separatists, often target Buddhists and Muslims associated with the Thai state such as police officers, soldiers, government officials and teachers.
No credible group has claimed responsibility for attacks in the region, where a majority of the people speak a Malay dialect as their first language and have long complained of discrimination, especially in education and job opportunities.
(Reporting by Surapan Boonthanom in Yala and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Nopporn Wong-Anan; Editing by Alan Raybould)
Thailand’s cabinet has agreed to extend a night curfew in Bangkok and 23 provinces until May 29, Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said on Tuesday.
Suthep said the curfew, which will be in force between midnight and 4 a.m., was necessary to prevent more unrest, but would not be in place for seven days, as was announced on Monday.
“We have cut the timeframe from seven to four days because we want to limit the impact on the public,” Suthep told reporters.
The curfew was put in place on May 19 after riots and arson attacks across Bangkok and in at least six provinces in the wake of an army crackdown to remove anti-government protesters in the capital.
(Reporting by Pracha Hariraksapitak; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
The Thai authorities have extended a curfew in Bangkok and 24 provinces for seven days because of concern about possible unrest, an army spokesman said on Monday.
“We have information that there are groups and individuals who still want to create chaos in some areas,” Sansern Kaewkamnerd told a news conference.
The curfew, from midnight to 4 a.m., must be formally approved by the cabinet at its weekly meeting on Tuesday, he added.
The curfew came into effect on May 19 after riots and arson broke out across Bangkok following an army crackdown to disperse anti-government protesters occupying a commercial district in the capital. (Reporting by Ambika Ahuja; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Alan Raybould)
Thai anti-government protesters agreed on Tuesday to talks brokered by a Senate leader to end Thailand’s deadliest political crisis in nearly two decades and halt spiralling violence that has killed 38 people in five days.
Troops have surrounded thousands of anti-government demonstrators in the fortified camp they have occupied since April 3 in central Bangkok. Pockets of violence have erupted in several other parts of the capital in recent days.
“We have agreed to take a new round of talks proposed by the Senate because if we allow things to go on like this, we don’t know how many more lives will be lost,” Nattawut Saikua, one of the “red shirt” leaders, told a news conference.
The talks would be led by a group of 64 senators who offered to mediate with the protesters and want a ceasfire on both sides.
The government’s response to the offer was not immediately known, but Nattawut, speaking inside the protesters’ fortified camp, said it was in the interests of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to seek a negotiated end to the unrest.
“There has never been a prime minister that could secure victory by killing people. That could only be achieved through winning the hearts and minds of the people,” he said.
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An estimated 5,000 of the red-shirted protesters remain in a camp covering 3 sq km (1.2 sq miles) of an upmarket shopping district, set up as part of a movement that began in mid-March with the aim of toppling the government and forcing elections.
The authorities had warned them to leave by 3 p.m. (0800 GMT) on Monday, but the deadline passed without action being taken.
Hundreds of women and children took refuge in a temple inside the protest area, but some protesters fought with soldiers in areas around the camp.
Red shirt leaders have previously proposed a ceasefire and talks moderated by the United Nations, which the government dismissed. On Monday, they said they would accept talks as long as a neutral arbiter took part and troops withdrew.
“The government cannot entertain demands from the protesters,” said Korbsak Sabhavasu, a senior aide to the prime minister earlier on Tuesday.
“The best way forward is to stop talking about negotiation and for the protest leaders to call their people back to the Rachaprasong rally area and stop the violence,” he added.
RANDOM KILLING
Army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said some “terrorists” were trying to foment trouble through random killings.
“There are groups of terrorists trying to create incidents by hurting and killing people. Their targets are innocent people at the rallies, rescue workers, journalists,” Sansern said.
He said one such incident occurred on Monday north of the main protest site in an apartment block under construction.
“A group of snipers dressed as soldiers were hiding on floors 24 to 27 aiming randomly at people, and that is being blamed on soldiers,” he told a televised briefing.
Thai media reported a fire was raging in a row of deserted shops in the same area on Tuesday and firefighters were struggling to get into the area because of barricades.
Erawan Emergency Medical Centre said on Tuesday that 38 people had died in the flare-up of violence since May 13 and 67 have been killed people since trouble started in April.
The protesters, mostly drawn from the rural and urban poor, and supporters of ousted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, had initially demanded immediate elections.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva unilaterally offered an election in November — just over a year before one was due — but withdrew the offer because the “red shirts” refused to end their rally and kept adding more demands.
“Following the prime minister’s decision to scrap the poll plan, it has become clear that hope for any political solution and reconciliation of the situation even in the short term is extremely slim,” political analyst Maria Patrikainen of IHS Global Insight Analysis wrote in a note on the crisis.
“With no immediate solution in sight, the fighting also threatens to further divide Thailand’s already fractured society, pushing the country towards civil war,” she added.
Among the smaller incidents reported from late on Monday, Channel 3 television reported that hundreds of red shirts had attempted to hold a protest at Ramkamhaneg University in the south of the city on Monday evening.
When students resisted and riot police intervened, the red shirts agreed to hold their rally outside the university. Later a gunman driving past on a motorbike fired into the crowd and the demonstrators dispersed. Some minor injuries were reported.
(Additional reporting by Arada Kultawanich and Ambika Ahuja; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Jason Szep)
Bangkok, May 18 (ANI): The ongoing Red-Shirt uprising in Thailand has dealt a severe blow to the country’s tourism industry, slashing arrivals to the country by almost one-third of the usual numbers.
Nineteen countries including the US have already issued tourist advisories to avoid the troubled state.
“The number of tourists has dropped considerably. The government was hoping that tourism in the South would see a boost but it is now more difficult as foreigners think that the unrest is occurring nationwide,” the Bangkok Post quoted Thai Tourism and Sports Minister Chumpol Silpa-archa as saying.
Foreigners are concerned about the security situation in the country and believe the tense situation is prevalent across Thai.
The government will be hoping to make up for the losses in the third and fourth quarter, “The government hopes this year”s tourist arrivals will reach the target with the time remaining,” Chumphol said.
The number of incoming passengers at Suvarnabhumi airport had dwindled from an average 30,000 to 20,000 passengers a day he added. (ANI)
The Wilderness Society split has intensified, with two opposing parties now claiming to hold power.
Following months of unrest and allegations of mismanagement, the society held a general meeting in Canberra yesterday.
Members of a group called Save the Wilderness Society left the meeting shortly after it started and elected a new national committee.
The current leadership has refused to recognise the new committee, but spokesman for the break-away group Geoff Law says the move will help end the dispute.
“We did the best that we could and complied with the constitution and ensured that our meeting went ahead and there were hundreds of people there in a constitutional meeting electing a new management committee which can hopefully leave behind the blemishes of the past,” he said.
The Executive Director of the Wilderness Society Alec Marr says the break-away meeting was illegitimate and he is considering legal action.
Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Apr 28(ANI): Three weeks after ousting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the interim Kyrgyzstan government has charged him with organizing mass murder linked with the country’s bloody unrest earlier this month.
Kyrgyz interim Deputy Prime Minister Azimbek Beknazarov said the interim government has adopted a legislation accusing Bakiyev of organizing mass murder and abusing power.
He said the legislation has also removed Bakiyev’s presidential immunity, and insisted the interim government would make a formal request for his extradition from Belarus to stand trial back home.
“A decree approving the extradition had been adopted by the interim government and the request would be sent to Minsk,” the Xinhua news agency quoted Beknazarov, as saying.
At least 85 people were killed in the protests that overthrew Bakiyev, whose security forces fired on the protesters as they stormed government buildings in Bishkek.
The interim government says Bakiyev ordered the police and soldiers to shoot.
After fleeing Bishkek, Bakiyev took refuge in his hometown of Osh and tried to regroup, but after being shot at, agreed to an internationally brokered deal to resign and go into exile. (ANI)
Anti-government protesters in Thailand have paraded the bodies of dead comrades through the streets of Bangkok.
Twenty-one people were killed and more than 800 were injured in weekend clashes with troops.
A procession of cars, trucks and taxis filled with Red Shirt demonstrators moved through the historic district of the capital with the bodies of their fallen comrades.
Prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has accused unnamed terrorists of inciting the unrest, meanwhile the protesters have accused the military of firing live ammunition into the crowd.
The ABC understands autopsies conducted on 11 of those killed in the street battle show they died as a result of high-velocity bullets.
That would appear to contradict claims by the government that soldiers did not shoot into the crowd.
The government has accused the Red Shirts of possessing assault rifles and of firing at retreating soldiers.
The Red Shirts have released a group of soldiers taken hostage during the clashes.
Sixteen civilians, four soldiers and a Japanese TV cameraman died in fierce street fighting over the weekend.
The clashes erupted when security forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas as they moved into the old quarter of Bangkok to disperse the anti-government protesters.
The soldiers were met by a barrage of rocks, sticks and even petrol bombs.
The show of force failed to budge the Red Shirts from their stronghold in the city’s old quarter, and the demonstrators are now vowing to stay on the streets of Bangkok.
They have warned that the time for negotiation is over.
KHARTOUM/JUBA, April 11 (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese queued up to start voting on Sunday, in historic elections already marred by allegations of fraud that will test the fragile unity of a nation divided by decades of civil conflict.
There were chaotic scenes at some polling centres — south Sudan’s president Salva Kiir had to wait 20 minutes under a tree for his voting station to open in the southern capital Juba and ended up spoiling his first ballot by putting it in the wrong box.
Queues started forming in the morning in Khartoum, where the streets were unusually quiet amid a heavy police presence and there were reports of delays in other areas.
Sudan’s police said they would deploy 100,000 officers across northern Sudan to guard polling stations and ward off unrest during three days of voting to choose a national president, a leader for the semi-autonomous south, assemblies and governors. (Reporting by Opheera McDoom and Skye Wheeler)
A lawyer working with asylum seekers on Christmas Island says the detainees are becoming increasingly distressed by the Federal Government’s policy changes.
The government has suspended the processing of all new applications for protection by people from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Asylum seekers from those two nations who are already on Christmas Island will still have their claims processed.
The Director of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre David Manne says the level of unrest at the facility has grown.
“There is a strong level of fear amongst even those who have been told that they won’t be caught out by the announcement that somehow they too will be negatively affected,” he said.
“There is a real level among some of the asylum seekers of confusion and of distress.”
Extra federal police have been sent to Christmas Island to deal with any backlash to the policy change.
The leader of Kyrgyzstan’s self-declared interim government has denied that Russia was involved in the unrest which drove the President Kurmanbek Bakiyev from power.
Roza Otunbayeva was speaking after attending a memorial service for some of those killed in the uprising on Wednesday.
“I don’t see any grounds for such accusation that Russia has interfered in internal affairs of Kyrgyzstan and fitted opposition financially or other way to come to this conflict,” she said.
Health officials now say that 79 people died in the violence.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken by phone with Ms Otunbayeva and urged her to renew her country’s path to democracy.
The two also discussed the US base at Manas airport in Kyrgyzstan, which is a key transport hub for US-led operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
With the overall security situation still unclear, the United States has suspended troop flights from the air base.
Asked about the future of the air base, Ms Otunbayeva said the country would keep to its commitments.
Mr Bakiyev was forced to flee the capital Bishkek amid a bloody uprising last week, but insists he will not resign.
At least 17 people were killed and 142 injured in clashes between riot police and opposition protesters in the capital of Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday, the Kyrgyz Kabar news agency said.
A Reuters reporter in Bishkek said about 1,000 people had stormed the Prosecutor-General’s office and were breaking the windows of the building and tossing out computers and office equipment.
An emergency services official who declined to be identified told Reuters that more than 50 people may have been killed in the unrest.
(Reporting by Olga Dzyubenko and Maria Golovnina, writing by Guy Faulconbridge)
BRUSSELS, April 2 (Reuters) – Turnover at Carrefour’s Belgian stores fell 15 percent in the last two weeks due to a drop in workers’ productivity as a result of announced job cuts in the country, the retailer’s chief executive for Belgium said.
Non-Cyclical Consumer Goods
“In the beginning, just after the announcement of restructuring, it wasn’t too bad. But now the stores are really suffering,” Gerard Lavinay told De Tijd in an interview published on Friday. “Workers are losing their motivation and customers are questioning what is happening.”
He declined to comment on how much in turnover a 15 percent drop represented.
De Tijd said the group lost 40 million euros in turnover due to blockades and strikes in the first week after the announcement in February, when it said it planned to close 21 stores in Belgium and cut 1,672 jobs.
Following talks with unions on Thursday, Carrefour said it could partially reverse that plan and keep nine of the 21 threatened stores open under certain conditions. (Writing by Antonia van de Velde, Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
BRUSSELS, April 2 (Reuters) – Turnover at Carrefour’s Belgian stores fell 15 percent in the last two weeks due to a drop in workers’ productivity as a result of announced job cuts in the country, the retailer’s chief executive for Belgium said.
Non-Cyclical Consumer Goods
“In the beginning, just after the announcement of restructuring, it wasn’t too bad. But now the stores are really suffering,” Gerard Lavinay told De Tijd in an interview published on Friday. “Workers are losing their motivation and customers are questioning what is happening.”
He declined to comment on how much in turnover a 15 percent drop represented.
De Tijd said the group lost 40 million euros in turnover due to blockades and strikes in the first week after the announcement in February, when it said it planned to close 21 stores in Belgium and cut 1,672 jobs.
Following talks with unions on Thursday, Carrefour said it could partially reverse that plan and keep nine of the 21 threatened stores open under certain conditions. (Writing by Antonia van de Velde, Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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