New clashes in Greek after austerity bill passed

By ELENA BECATOROS (AP)

ATHENS, Greece — Greek lawmakers approved drastic austerity cuts Thursday needed to secure international rescue loans worth euro110 billion ($140 billion) and police fired tear gas to repel stone-throwing protesters after the vote.

In New York, Dow Jones industrials plunged almost 1,000 points amid concerns that Greece's debt problems could halt the world financial recovery. The Dow managed to recover two-thirds of its losses and close down 347 at 10,520.

There were reports that a technical glitch hastened the selling, but emotions were running high. Traders watched protests in the streets of Athens on TV.

The new clashes came a day after violent protests left three people dead after a bank was firebombed in Athens.

Greek lawmakers voted 172-121 to approve the austerity measures — worth about euro30 billion ($38.18 billion) through 2012 — that will slash pensions and civil servants' pay and further hike consumer taxes.

The rescue loans are aimed at containing the debt crisis and keeping Greece's troubles from spreading to other countries with vulnerable state finances such as Portugal and Spain. The money will come from the International Monetary Fund and the 15 other governments whose countries use the euro.

Fears of Greek default have undermined the euro, and while the current package should keep Greece from immediate bankruptcy, its long-term prospects are unclear. The country's growth prospects are weak, and the population's willingness to accept cutbacks may wane, leading some economists to predict an eventual debt restructuring somewhere down the road.

Opposition parties lambasted the government for imposing measures that are too harsh for the population to bear.

"The dose of the medicine you are administering is in danger of killing the patient," conservative opposition leader Antonis Samaras said.

Samaras also expelled a dissenting lawmaker, former Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis, reducing his share of parliamentary seats to 90.

Clashes in Athens broke out at the end of a main protest that drew tens of thousands of people as police pushed back a few thousand demonstrators outside parliament.

The violence was quickly contained with riot police firing tear gas at the protesters, who had earlier pelted them with stones, oranges and bottles. Several small fires burned in surrounding streets. No injuries or arrests were reported.

Demonstrators banging drums and shouting anti-government slogans through bullhorns, unfurled a giant black banner outside parliament earlier Thursday. More than 30,000 demonstrators filled downtown streets, chanting "They declared war. Now fight back".

Prime Minister George Papandreou expelled three Socialist deputies who dissented in the vote, reducing the party's number of seats to 157 in the 300-member parliament.

"We have done what was necessary, not what was easy," Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said after the vote. "Without these measures, we'd be thrown into the deepest recession this country has ever known".

The bulk of Thursday's protest — organized by the Greek Communist Party — quickly dispersed, leaving about 5,000 demonstrators outside parliament before police pushed them back.

Protester Thodoris Mougiakos said he was angry the IMF would control Greek finances.

"It's blackmail," the 32-year-old engineer said. "There is money, but they spend it on things like armaments and businesses. The church has money too. If we had been drawing money from all these sources, we wouldn't be in this situation now.".

But the protest remained peaceful, in contrast with Wednesday's rioting that left three people dead, 59 injured and 25 people arrested. Police said 50 stores, banks and offices were damaged and seven vehicles damaged or burned.

Papaconstantinou said Greece would default on debt payments this month unless it received the bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund and 15 euro-zone countries that had remained divided for months on how to aid Athens.

"Today things are simple. Either we vote and implement the deal, or we condemn Greece to bankruptcy," Papandreou told parliament before the vote.

"Some people want that, and are speculating (on it), and hope that it will happen," he said, referring to speculative attacks that have been blamed for raising Greece's borrowing costs to unsustainable levels. "We, I, will not allow that. We will not allow speculation against our country, and bankruptcy to happen".

European governments are now scrambling to get parliamentary approval for the Greek loans. European leaders will meet on the issue in Brussels on Friday.

Associated Press writers Nicholas Paphitis and Derek Gatopoulos contributed to this report

Associated Press

Seychelles to tackle pirates with regional court

VIENNA (Reuters) - The Seychelles will set up a regional centre to prosecute pirates as part of an international push to stem costly attacks of ships off the Somali coast, the U.N. crime-fighting agency said.

Seychelles, a group of islands to the east of lawless Somalia, already has experience in putting on trial pirates caught in its waters and now wants to play a wider role, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said.

"As naval activity in the Horn of Africa becomes increasingly secure, pirates are moving south, attacking yachts, fishing vessels and other ships based in or operating around Seychelles," it said in a statement on its website.

"In response, Seychelles has announced that it is to establish a regional centre for the prosecution of piracy".

Kenya has already moved to set up a similar court in reaction to the attacks and the United Nations Security Council has called for such special centres to help tackle piracy.

Under the plan, the Seychelles will be able to prosecute pirates caught by EU naval patrols in the area. The UNODC said it was working with the islands and European Union to prepare police, coastguard, prosecutors, courts and prisons for the trials. It did not give a timeframe for the plan.

The hijacking of ships near the coast of Somalia, where an Islamist insurgency and general lawlessness have helped pirates to flourish, has cost the shipping industry tens of millions of dollars in ransoms for vessels and their crews.

Prosecution of pirates, some of whom go free even if they are captured, has been hampered by disagreements over which country should try them. Somalia does not have the legal infrastructure for trials.

Reuters Africa

Africa seeks quick separate trade deal: WTO's Lamy

By Matthew Tostevin

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - African states have floated the idea of a separate trade deal package to address their concerns while big countries wrangle over full global agreement, the head of the World Trade Organisation said.

Africa wants a faster resolution to long-running global trade talks, held up by discussions among powers such as the United States, European Union, China and India over obstacles of less relevance on the world's poorest continent.

"There is not only a sort of frustration, but there is also an operational option which African countries floated the day before yesterday in the General Council in Geneva," Lamy told reporters at the World Economic Forum on Africa on Thursday.

"They haven't yet tabled a detailed proposal but my feeling is that that is coming," he said in Tanzania.

Such a proposal could meet scepticism in the United States and Europe, however, as rich countries would be reluctant to hand over something in advance and then not get credit when they push for a final deal.

Lamy said he expected such a proposal would address duty-free, quota-free access for goods from least developed countries with a similar deal on services and a possible deal on trade facilitation -- making cross border trade easier and cheaper.

It could also be expected to address one of the key demands of some African states for an end to cotton subsidies, which depress prices for poor farmers.

But it would not deal with tariffs on electrical goods or drugs, which matter to more industrialised economies.

"It is just a modification in the sequence of negotiations," he said. "Whether this will work or not is not for me to say, but my sense is that their growing impatience will probably lead them to take this sort of initiative".

Lamy said that as global trade was rebounding -- the WTO forecasts 9.5 percent growth this year after a 12.2 percent contraction in 2009 -- African trade was also increasing with the rest of the world and within the continent.

But he said access to trade financing after the global financial crisis had not returned so quickly in Africa.

"The market has seriously improved since last year but there still remain issues with liquidity availability and price in Africa," he said. "It certainly remains a constraint. More than on other continents".

Reuters Africa

Nashville residents return home to devastation

By SHEILA BURKE and TRAVIS LOLLER (AP)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Amanda Fatheree had about an hour to flee the floodwaters from her west Nashville home Sunday with her husband, mother and three young children. What she saw when she returned a day later left her heartbroken.

Furniture she and her husband spent years paying off stood in their front yard, soaked and caked with mud from deadly flooding caused by record-busting rains that forced thousands to evacuate — some by boat and canoe. Her children's toys, clothes, books and games were destroyed, along with two vehicles that were left behind.

"When I first got here, I just cried and cried. My whole life was gone," she said.

Flash flooding and storms killed at least 29 people in Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky and at least five people were still missing on Thursday. Memphis police reported that Terrance Williams, 32, went missing Saturday after his car was disabled in rising floodwaters. 

Nashville police said 29-year-old Danny Tomlinson was last seen Sunday when his vehicle ran into high waters, and that 18-year-old Daniel Alexander Brown went missing while tubing Sunday on Mill Creek.

In Kentucky, WKYT-TV reports 18-year-old John Pickerell was kayaking Wednesday with two friends on Lake Cumberland when their boat capsized. The others swam to shore but couldn't find Pickerell. Another kayaker, Robert W. Atcher, 55, was last seen Monday afternoon in the swollen Green River.

The flooding was caused by rains of more than 13 inches and affected both rich and poor in this metropolitan area of about 1 million.

Mayor Karl Dean estimates the damage from weekend flooding could easily top $1 billion in Nashville alone, but on Thursday, he encouraged visitors to come and promised to greet them personally.

As the rain-swollen Cumberland River continued to recede Thursday, one of Nashville's two water plants was disabled, but officials said progress was being made. Power was restored to such famous buildings as the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, but about 3,000 customers were still without power. Parts of downtown were still off-limits to pedestrians.

It was getting easier to get around Nashville, and to clean up. City crews were set to begin hauling away residents' flood-ruined possessions Thursday and some roads, closed by high water, reopened.

In Franklin, about 20 miles south of Nashville, some were concerned about safety because the flooding had caused sewers to overflow in many places.

In the Cottonwood subdivision, white specks littered the ground.

"It's sewage," said Peggy Poag, a 52-year-old physical therapist. "You see all this white stuff — it's toilet paper".

Adam Johnston, 28, in the same subdivision, was told by a contractor to use lime to fight the sewage smell in his home.

"Whatever gets rid of the smell," he said.

Back in Nashville, Ralithea Hill and her husband returned home to find almost everything damaged or destroyed by water. They swam out of their front yard early Sunday, each carrying one of the family dogs.

"In a matter of 30 minutes, everything you worked for, everything you thought was valuable, it all looks like trash," said Hill, a 39-year-old surgical technologist and mother of four. The family's furniture, clothes, bedding and rugs sat in the front of their north Nashville home, soaked and contaminated by the dirty water. She said there was no chance at saving any of it.

The flash floods were blamed in the deaths of at least 18 people in Tennessee alone, including nine in Nashville. An additional 10 deaths from the weekend storms were reported in Kentucky and Mississippi, and one person was killed over the weekend by a tornado in Tennessee.

Although the National Weather Service said the Cumberland had dropped about 3 feet from its crest of 12 feet on Sunday, water still covered the city's so-called tent city, home to about 140 homeless people under an interstate bypass along the riverbank. Several former residents walked the railroad tracks that bordered the high side of the encampment Wednesday to see if they could recover any of their belongings.

"People have been trickling down here all day long," said Raphael McPherson, a 47-year-old resident who was at the site trying to find his cat, Jack. "They're trying to see how far the water has receded and if they can even go back and get anything, but it's a toxic area now".

McPherson and others said city officials had told them contaminants from the surrounding industrial area would make their campsite uninhabitable even after the water goes down.

"They're not going to open tent city again," he said.

Associated Press Writer Teresa M. Walker in Franklin, Tenn., contributed to this report.

Eds: CORRECTS Johnston's age to 28; UPDATES with additional details on power restored in some areas, visitors encouraged; TRIMS dated material.

Associated Press