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BRUSSELS: Amid soaring global food prices, leading to rioting
in Africa and beyond, France is pushing its EU partners to respond
swiftly and return agriculture to the top of its agenda. French
Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier, whose country has the biggest
farming sector in Europe, has said he will urge his EU counterparts,
at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, to come up with a “European
initiative on food security” throughout the world. He has stressed
the urgency of the problem as unrest linked to the price hikes in
cereals and other basic foodstuffs multiplies throughout the world,
notably in Africa but recently also in Haiti.
-- AFP
DHAKA: About 20,000 workers rioted over high
food prices and low wages on Saturday close to the Bangladesh
capital Dhaka, police said, amid spreading global unrest over
soaring grocery costs. Police fired tear gas and used batons to
break up the protests and at least 50 people were injured, most of
them police officers. About 20,000 textile workers from more than a
dozen factories went on the rampage in Fatullah, 20 kilometers (12
miles) south of Dhaka, demanding better pay amid soaring rice
prices, police chief Bhuiyan Mahbub Hasan said. Police said they
wrecked cars and buses, vandalized factories and hurled bricks and
stones at police.
-- AFP
SHENYANG: Different localities in northeast
China’s Liaoning Province have been taking pains to combat a
drought that has forced 670,000 residents, plus 230,000 head of
livestock, out of drinking water. Local governments in Liaoning have
raised 23 million yuan (about $3.15 million) on their own and have
been busy organizing personnel to dredge, expand and reinforce
existing water conservation facilities, said a local source. By late
March, the province had constructed more than 1,700 new wells and
built more than 700 new water conservation works. About 33,333
hectares of arable land had been irrigated. Though farming accounts
for a comparatively small proportion of the local economy of
Liaoning, an industrial giant in China, the province remains one of
the country’s 13 key commodity grain production bases.
-- Xinhua
PHNOM PENH: Thousands of Cambodians crammed onto
buses and cars, some clinging to roofs and spilling out of doors, as
they headed out of Phnom Penh on Sunday for the Buddhist New Year
holiday. The three-day holiday, also celebrated in Thailand, Myanmar
and Laos, gives thousands of Cambodia’s transient workers a rare
chance to spend time with family, leaving the normally
traffic-choked capital unusually empty. “This is the only chance I
have to visit my parents, and I am so excited,” said 22-year-old
Sun Srey Pov, who left her hometown in Cambodia’s eastern province
to work in a Phnom Penh garment factory.
-- AFP
CANBERRA: Queensland’s governor Quentin Bryce
was appointed on Sunday to be the first female governor-general in
Australia to succeed the current Governor-General Major General
Michael Jeffery. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a statement that
Bryce would become Australia’s 25th governor-general in a
five-year term. The announcement came as current Governor-General
Major General Michael Jeffery handed in his resignation.
-- Xinhua
BEIJING: Chinese government is mulling to lift
the benchmark poverty line from the current 1,067 yuan ($152
dollars) to 1,300 yuan ($185 dollars), according to a notice issued
by the Poverty Alleviation Office under the State Council over the
weekend. In the notice, the office solicited opinions and
suggestions from 26 of its subsidiaries nationwide on the plan.
-- Xinhua
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