PretoMedia

A 5.2-degree earthquake shook El Salvador on Saturday that authorities had no reported damage or injuries.

The National Service of Territorial Studies (SNET) of El Salvador reported that the tremor occurred at 10:15 (1615 GMT) with epicenter in the Pacific off the coast of the department of La Libertad, in the central area of the country, south of the capital.

The earthquake had a focal depth of 56 kilometers, detailed the SNET.

The tremor was felt throughout the country and with enough strength in the capital, where it caused panic among the population, but authorities did not report any major problem.

One person added that “here in San Salvador quite frightened people, but that was just the shock, we did a crawl across the country and did not damage or casualties, it was only the shock.”

New clashes happened in Athens today near Parliament, where about 200 youths began throwing rocks and other objects against the police, informed the station “Alpha”.

The radicals are divided between the Parliament and the University of Athens, which are within a distance of about 500 meters, attacking the police, who responded with tear gas, according to the radio “City”.

According to that station, among the demonstrators for several minors.

Reporters of the channel “Alpha” the site reported that the insurgency is much more radical among the demonstrators.

In the vicinity of the university, several people who took coffee in one of the terraces have arisen and started to throw stones against the police, for this to stop attacking the demonstrators, said the channel “Alpha”.

The disturbances occur from today on the same day that is called a general strike of 24 hours across the country in protest against the poor economic situation and in favor of more social justice.

For that reason, some 15 thousand people concentrated in the center of Athens in demonstrations called by major trade unions of workers and civil servants from the private sector and public.

The riots began last Saturday, when Alexandros Grigoropoulos of 15 years, died due to shooting of a police officer in Athens.

So today, the fourth consecutive day of riots and a day after the funeral of the teenager, thousands of students and teachers do demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament and shout words of order in remembrance of the young man who died.

The Greek television reported that there was also violence in the port city of Thessaloniki in the north of the country, where the police arrested 12 people - most younger than 14 years - who played fruit and stones against the officers.

Police launched tear gas against demonstrators who were sheltered in the premises of the Aristotle University.

There were also violent incidents in Kavala, a city of about 70 thousand inhabitants in northeastern Greece, where protesters have launched objects against the police barracks.

“We left on the streets, despite the fear of incidents,” he said today Chair of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE), Andreas Panagopoulos, who announced that the unions convene a new general strike for December 22, the day that Parliament vote the state budget.

Stathis Anestis, spokesman for the GSEE, told AFP in Athens that “the participation of various sectors in the strike was a huge success,” and added that “or the government changes its policy, or change the government.”

The main airports in India continued this Saturday in a state of alert against the threat of attacks, ten days after the violent attacks against Muslims Mumbai that left 172 dead, official sources announced.

Authorities said it received an email warning of the possibility of attacks against the Indian air bases, which include the taking of hostages and hijacking of airplanes.

The message referred to the day on December 6, 2008, when the 16th anniversary of the destruction of a mosque in northern India by Hindu extremists, action that triggered a dreadful wave of religious violence.

“Security is at its highest level for some time, but after the attacks in Mumbai, all airports in western India and all international airports of the country are in a state of maximum alert,” especially those in the capital New Delhi , From Bangalore (south) and Madras (southeast), said Mushmi CHAKRAVARTY, spokesman of the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

The control of security from boarding in India is already intense a few years ago, but now has been strengthened “to avoid any problem,” said a police officer at the airport in New Delhi.

Located the black box of the Airbus in the rugged French coast 

The three-black boxes of the Airbus A320 plane of Air New Zealand, damaged on Thursday in the French Mediterranean coast with seven crew on board when conducting a test flight, were located, reported today the Mayor of Perpignan (southwestern France) . 

The French Navy divers responsible for the work of today succeeded in conducting a search immersion, despite the adverse weather conditions, the sources said. 

“The priority is to recover the bodies, take DNA to identify victims and return them to their families,” said the deputy prosecutor of Perpignan, Dominique Alzeari. 

Two bodies were recovered yesterday, while another five are still missing. 

For reasons not yet determined, the plane fell to about eight kilometers in front of the coast of Saint-Cyprien, near Perpignan, in the midst of bad weather conditions, with heavy rain and winds. 

The French lost their radar signal at around 13.45 in Brasilia, and shortly afterwards the wreckage of the apparatus were sighted by a civilian ship, warned that the rescue services. 

The plane, a unit of twin engine with a capacity for 150 passengers, was delivered to New Zealand company in July 2005 and accumulated 7 thousand hours of flight, said Airbus, a subsidiary of European aerospace consortium EADS.

 Notice had been issued after tremors of 7.7 and 6 degrees in Sulawesi.
There are reports of buildings that have fallen on the island, but no news of casualties.

The meteorological agency of Indonesia suspended the warning of tsunami that was issued after an earthquake of 7.7 degrees on the Richter scale struck the coastal region north of Sulawesi Island in the Pacific Ocean.

The Center for Control of Tsunamis Pacific, the United States, also issued a tsunami alert systems to a regional area of square kilometers around the epicenter, with “destructive potential.” A tsunami is a series of giant waves that can be produced by an underwater volcanic eruption, by shaking of earth and also by the fall of meteorites.

According to the Geological Research Center of the U.S., the earthquake in Indonesia was magnitude 7.5 on the scale of the moment and there was 1:02 a.m. on Monday (local time).

The epicenter is located 136 km from the city of Gorontalo, on Sulawesi, and 1890 km from the capital, Jakarta.

A secondary tremor of 6 degrees Richter was felt around half an hour later in the same region, according to the Indonesian authorities. The U.S. Geological Center estimated the quake at 5.7 secondary.

 
Still no information on casualties, but Indonesian authorities said they were overturned buildings in the town of Tolitoli in Sulawesi. Witnesses said the tremor was felt with strength in Gorontalo.

Indonesia is an archipelago of 17 thousand islands and is located on the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an area of great seismic and volcanic activity that is hit by about 7 thousand tremors a year, most of small magnitude.

Indonesia launched on Tuesday passed a new high-tech system to detect potential tsunamis and provide more rapid alerts to residents of the region. (Watch the video to firstly)

On December 26, 2004, an earthquake of 9 degrees and struck the Sumatra triggered a tsunami that killed 170 thousand people in Indonesia, most in Aceh.

It may already be too late to the much discussed “October surprise”, but the Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain need to be attentive to the fateful “last the weekend.”

The straight end of the last two presidential elections was unexpected events, which apparently influenced the outcome of disputes very tight.

Five days of the election of Nov. 4, the chance for a fact that could turn the game in favor of McCain seems increasingly remote, but continues to exist.

“The end of last week can be a very weird and strange period in a presidential campaign,” said Steven Schio, political analyst from Carleton College in Minnesota.

“It’s when the last voters who were not paying attention are linked, and decide if the last undecided. Strange things can happen.”

In 2004, Osama bin Laden, leader of Al Qaeda, made an announcement on Friday prior to the election, moving the discussion to the terrorist threat, possibly helping in the reelection of George W. Bush - like his opponent John Kerry concede later.

In 2000, the latest campaign controversy arose on Thursday prior to the election - Bush, then governor of Texas, had been arrested in 1976 for driving drunk, and never publicly revealed the fact.

Advisers said that the complaint claimed the slight edge to Bush that he was in the national polls to vote. The Democrat Al Gore won the national election but lost the dispute in the Electoral College, after the recount of votes in Florida.

Polls of mouth-to-urn indicated that the disclosure actually affected the vote to Bush in recent days.

Until now, this campaign has been free of such shocks, which already constitute a political tradition in the U.S. - the “October surprises”, which change elections a few days of the election (always at the beginning of November). It was thus in 1980, when Jimmy Carter, candidate for reelection, lost to Ronald Reagan after the failure of negotiations to free hostages in Irã.

The phenomenon had almost occurred in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson ordered to stop the bombing in North Viento, a week of the election - which did not prevent the Republican Richard Nixon beat the government candidate Hubert Humphrey.

But this year the October surprise came in September - the crisis on Wall Street and the financial package, which inclinaram the polls in favor of Obama, better assessed by voters on economic issues. Such global economic crisis in the midst of a campaign was something unheard

There are few surprises that McCain and Obama as to prepare for this final straight. Both now the last weekend in strategic states such as Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Colorado.

In national polls, Obama leads by a margin of 3-8 percentage points. In search of Fox News Thursday, the advantage of Democrats fell in a week from 9 to 3 points. In this research, there are still 6 percent undecided. In others, the quota is even greater.

“At this point, there are still many doubters who can decide. Suits at the end can really determine the outcome of tight races.”

Paris, Oct 19.- The Government of France, who did not want to comment on the investigation for abuse of power of the director-manager of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, praised his performance before the financial crisis.

The spokesman of the French Government, Luc Chatel, stressed that “Strauss-Kahn has demonstrated, throughout the course of this crisis, which was the height of the events.”

“He took the full extent of its role in recent weeks,” was “a man of the situation,” he added Chatel, who said that the IMF would be “a very important role in the coming months.”

On the investigation, the spokesman merely stated that “in ten days we will see if there was abuse of power or not.”

The American newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” revealed yesterday that the IMF had opened an investigation into whether Strauss-Kahn detrminar abused his office when kept in an extramarital relationship with a subordinate at the beginning of the year.

Strauss-Kahn has not yet been questioned, which, according to sources close to him said today by the French newspaper “Le Journal du Dimanche,” probably will not be needed because the statements of the woman with whom he was related, Piroska Nagy, discard the hypothesis Managing-director of the IMF have made use of influence peddling.

According to these sources, the leak in the press yesterday was an attempt to create a scandal because “there is nothing politically” that can disapprove the “number one” of the IMF, in post since November 2007. EFE

The former American footballer OJ Simpson, famous for his victories in the sport, their participation in film and the trial for the murder of his ex-wife of which he was acquitted, you can get life imprisonment after being found guilty of assault in Las Vegas, kidnapping and armed robbery.

Simpson, of 61 years, could spend the rest of life in prison along with her partner of golf Clarence Stewart, of 54, also found guilty of 12 charges of armed robbery and two for sporting goods sellers of collector in Las Vegas in September 2007.

After three weeks of trial, in which 20 witnesses gave testimony, the jury - composed of nine women and three men - delivered their unanimous verdict.

The Judge Jackie Glass must now define the conviction that, despite initially having to go into a period of 30 days, will be postponed until Dec. 5 at the request of the defense.

Simpson, who was calm throughout the trial, was moved when the verdict was read.

The process was conducted 13 years after Simpson was acquitted in that trial against him in Los Angeles for the murder of ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and a friend of her, Ronald Goldman.

That was one of the most famous trials in U.S. history, it opens serious questions about the police system and latent racism in the country.

Furthermore, put into question the impartiality of juries, and made the company aware of the differences that persisted between blacks and whites (the defendant was black and the two victims, white).

The racial factor has been crucial in the trial because the defense lawyer stressed the racist behavior of the principal investigator of the case, whom he accused of planting evidence against his client as a famous black.

The trial, displayed all the time in American television, turned into a media spectacle, which ridicule the jury system when it in black majority, acquitted the accused.

Polls of opinion at the time indicated that the Simpson case had become common cause for many blacks and had exacerbated the differences with the whites, who in their majority, found the verdict unfair and motivated by the solidarity of race.

After the announcement of the verdict, the then U.S. President, Bill Clinton, had to ask for respect for the judiciary and make an appeal for unity of the nation.

Later, Simpson was found guilty in a civil trial, and this, added to the launch, last year’s book “If I Did It” ( “If I had done” in free translation), which describes the way fictional as would have committed the murders, causing continued doubts about whether he is really a murderer or not.

This is a ghost that, according to the lawyer for Simpson, Yale Galante, influenced the sentence as a rematch of the trial of the 1990s, and has already announced that appeal the sentence.

There are differences: There were no blacks in the trial of Las Vegas, on the other hand, there were more women, and if Simpson has also opened a debate on domestic violence because the former player allegedly assaulted several times the ex-wife.

“The verdict was not a surprise. We knew what would happen,” said Galante, who said that members of the jury were predisposed to declare Simpson guilty.

The case was dismissed by which this time is the theft, along with several Minion, a seller of sporting goods that had objects signed by Simpson of the season when playing in the National League of American Football (NFL, in English).

The seller, Bruce Fremong, acknowledged that he had an appointment with an anonymous buyer, Simpson, who said that the items belonged to him.

In his testimony, Freemong said that Simpson began shouting: “This is all my m. ..! All this belongs to me. You stole it. Let’s get everything and get out of here.”

According to witnesses, one of Minion of Simpson pointed a gun at the face of Freemong and screamed: “I will throw in his c. ..”.

During the trial, Freemong said the player went to the hotel only to recover the belongings that had been stolen and that he did not know that his Minion were armed.

Four of those who accompanied Simpson - Charles Cashmore, Walter “Goldie” Alexander, Michael “Spencer” McClinton and Charles Ehrlich - was declared guilty of the charges and agreed to testify against former American football player.

In the U.S., armed robbery is punishable with between two and 30 years’ imprisonment, and kidnapping has convictions ranging from five years to life imprisonment.

The research that came out of the oven in the middle of the storm that fell on Wall Street indicated that the worsening economic crisis helped U.S. Senator Barack Obama to gain speed in the race for the White House, but analysts linked to the Democratic Party have expressed skepticism about the ability that the candidate must jump the obstacles ahead.

According to Gallup, Obama now has the support of 49% of American voters and the Republican Party’s candidate, Senator John McCain, is at 45%. There are signs that in recent days Obama opened a small lead over the rival, but the dispute between them continues apertadíssima, especially in the weight that should be more decisive in the game.

Many observers find astonishing that Obama has not fired in front of the opponent so far. The unpopularity of Republicans and the government of President George W. Bush, the distress of the electorate with the economy and weariness with the war in Iraq created an environment so favorable to the Democrats it is hard to understand why their candidate is not performing better in the polls.

Many voters were frightened with the inexperience of Obama, a characteristic that the opponents insist highlight. Some can not identify with him because he is black. But in recent weeks a growing chorus among Democrats rose to assign the difficulties of Obama the factors that have nothing to do with racism or cheat the Republicans, pointing to flaws in the conduct of their campaign and how he communicates with the electorate.

“[Obama] is in danger of missing an election that many thought was impossible to lose,” he said last week William Galston, who was a graduate adviser of former President Bill Clinton and now works at the Brookings Institution, an influential center of studies . “The reason is simple: the most important issue for the electorate, the economy, [it] does not have a clear message.”

In an open letter, the candidate who has moved on Tuesday, Galston made several criticisms of Obama. He said that his speeches are too long and have too much poetry, that his attacks against McCain and the lobbyists who work in the Republican campaign are nothing but a waste of time, and it would be much better focus its economic plan around the few proposals that try to offer solutions for everything.

A report distributed by two experts in research, Stan Greenberg and James Carville, the strategist behind the election of Clinton in 1992, expressed the same kind of grief. “McCain claimed the mantle of change and defined it in terms that are credible to some voters,” they wrote. “In the absence of a coherent message of change from Obama, many voters are accepting the definition of McCain.”

Overall, the polls show that voters have more confidence in the ability of Obama to lead the economy than McCain. But its advantage over the Republican candidate in that department declined significantly before the financial crisis from worsening, according to the latest survey of the Pew Research Center, completed days before the earthquake of last week.

The worsening of the situation Obama offers a valuable opportunity to reverse this trend, because it tends to increase dissatisfaction with the government and the Republicans. The political analysts generally believe that their initial reaction was better than McCain, but the last few days have also seen the difficulties that both are to deal with the issue.

Obama has sought to take advantage of the crisis the Republicans blaming the problems on Wall Street and linking McCain to the policies of the Bush administration. But his efforts to overcome the fears of the electorate, and it appears as a moderate leader and trusted lead him to express support for all measures adopted by the Bush administration so far to tackle the crisis.

McCain also endorsed the initiatives of the government. But during the week has taken an erratic behavior, first classified as “solid” the fundamentals of the U.S. economy and then printing a populist tone of his speeches. McCain blamed the “ambition” of Wall Street by the crisis and called for the resignation of the authorities responsible for monitoring the capital market.

The American voters can better examine the differences between the two candidates next Friday, when Obama and McCain face is the first of three debates that will be made in the final straight of the season. “Neither of the two candidates is very consistent on the issue of the economy,” he said last week Neil Newhouse, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, a company that searches for the Republicans.