Thousands march in Paris to support gay marriage

PARIS (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of people marched through Paris on Sunday to support the French government‘s plan to legalize gay marriage and adoption, but the turnout fell well short of a mass demonstration against the project two weeks ago.

Police estimated total attendance at about 125,000, while organizers put the number at 400,000. Two weeks ago, organizers of the anti-gay marriage protest claimed turnout of one million, while police put the number at 340,000, an unusually high turnout even in protest-prone France.

“There is a big difference between today’s march and the one two weeks ago, which is that this demonstration is one of brotherhood, not of hatred,” Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe, who is openly gay, said on French television.

“The majority of French people wants all couples to have equality in love and parenthood,” Delanoe added.

On Tuesday, French parliament starts a two-week debate about the planned law change, which would be one of the biggest social reforms since abolition of the death penalty in 1981.

The government‘s socialist and green majority is determined to pass the legislation, against which the conservative opposition has lodged some 5,000 amendments.

On Saturday, an Ifop poll showed the proportion of French supporting legalization of same-sex marriage has risen to 63 percent from 60 percent in early January and December, despite weeks of protest against the planned reform.

Support for adoption rights for gay couples also rose by 3 percentage points, although the country remains divided on the issue, with 49 percent in favor, according to the firm.

Several government ministers took part in the march and will be among a string of celebrities at a party organized by Pierre Berge, partner of late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.

Former French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot was one of the few conservative politicians to support the marchers.

“Nobody has anything to fear from this step forward,” she told BFM television.

Henri Guaino, a former top adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, told BFM the proposed law was a “a denial of nature” and called for a referendum on the issue.

“It is a negation of the difference between the sexes,” he said.

Opponents of gay marriage and adoption, including most faith leaders in France, have argued that the reform would create psychological and social problems for children.

Same-sex weddings are legal in 11 countries including Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Norway and South Africa, as well as nine U.S. states and Washington D.C.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Jason Webb)

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The Boom Times Return to Dubai

Rewa Zeinati, a freelance writer in Dubai, has noticed more business cards with photos of scantily clad women offering massages piling up on her car windscreen lately. “Sometimes I’m away for 30 minutes and come back to find a stack of them,” says Zeinati. “I’ve definitely seen an increase this year.”

With Dubai’s economy posting its fastest growth since 2007, residents also say it’s harder to find taxis, book restaurants, and get places in private schools for their children. Residential rents climbed about 17 percent last year, while the volume of non-oil trade hit record highs. “Hotel occupancy is up quite significantly and the airport is crazy,” says Abdul Kadir Hussain, chief executive at Mashreq Capital (DIFC), which runs the region’s best-performing fixed-income funds. “If you go to Jebel Ali Free Zone, rents are up and it’s fully occupied. That part of the model is working very well.” The free zone is one of the world’s largest transshipment points for containerized cargo.

The drivers of Dubai’s new growth are services, legal and otherwise, and exports such as electronics, which are shipped out of the free zone. This stress on services and exports suggests any new Dubai boom won’t be a repeat of the debt-fueled real estate bubble that crashed when the global crisis hit in 2008.

In the first half of 2012, construction shrank 2.5 percent from a year earlier while earnings from hotels and restaurants grew 16 percent. The economy expanded 4.3 percent in 2012, according to preliminary estimates. Dubai’s stock index gained 12 percent in the past month, four times the advance of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Shares of Emaar Properties (EMAAR), which owns Dubai Mall, the world’s largest, jumped 18 percent. The prices of bonds issued by Emirates airline and the Jebel Ali Free Zone are doing better than ever.

Concerns linger that the economy could overheat again. The Dubai government announced plans in November to build a shopping center even bigger than Dubai Mall. Such mega-projects led the emirate to rack up about $ 113 billion of debt before the crash. Abu Dhabi, the richest of the seven sheikdoms in the United Arab Emirates, had to engineer a $ 20 billion bailout of Dubai in 2009. Dubai still has about $ 40 billion of debt due by the end of next year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC).

The UAE’s central bank, based in Abu Dhabi, has capped mortgage lending at 70 percent of a property’s value for Emiratis and 50 percent for foreigners, with even lower lending caps for second mortgages. “Abu Dhabi doesn’t want to bail out Dubai again,” says Emad Mostaque, a strategist with Noah Capital Markets in London. UAE authorities are trying to “keep their economy as stable and bulletproof as possible when they see instability all around them.”

The wave of uprisings in Arab countries has hurt some of the region’s economies. Dubai, which escaped unrest, may be among the beneficiaries. “Political stability makes it a very attractive place for travelers in the region to spend their time and money,” says Khatija Haque, senior economist at lender Emirates NBD.

Finance is playing a smaller part than it did during last decade’s boom; the sector grew only 3.2 percent in the first half of 2012. Still, Dubai plans to boost the industry, partly by launching a sharia finance council that will make sure certain financial products and contracts conform to Islamic law. Such a council will help attract more wealth from the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.

As recovery takes hold, Mashreq Capital’s Hussain is struggling to find early-morning slots at his favorite golf course. “In the last three winters I could just drive up to my club, get out, and play” he says. This year, after twice being turned away because the course was full, “I decided to call two days before. And they said ‘yeah, but not till 9:30.’ ”

The bottom line: While Dubai is growing again, the emirate still has to pay off $ 40 billion in debt at the end of next year.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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French, Mali forces retake airport in city of Gao

KONNA, Mali (AP) — French and Malian troops regained control of the airport and bridge of the crucial, northern city of Gao on Saturday, marking their biggest advance yet in their bid to oust al-Qaida-linked extremists who have controlled northern Mali for months, military officials said.

The move comes just two weeks after France launched its military offensive in support of the shaky, central government of this former French colony. It is unclear what kind of resistance French and Malian troops will face in the coming days.

The French military said in a statement on its website that their special forces, which had stormed in by land and by air, had come under fire from “several terrorist elements” that were later “destroyed.”

In a later press release entitled “French and Malian troops liberate Gao” the French ministry of defense said they were bringing back the town’s mayor, Sadou Diallo, who had fled to Mali‘s capital Bamako far to the west.

However, a city official interviewed by telephone by The Associated Press said coalition forces so far only controlled the airport, the bridge and surrounding neighborhoods.

And in Paris, a defense ministry official clarified that the city had not been fully liberated, and that the process of freeing Gao was continuing.

Both officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Swooping in under the cover of darkness, the French and Malian forces faced sporadic “acts of harassment” during the day, Col. Thierry Burkhard, a French military spokesman in Paris, said. He had no immediate estimate on casualties.

Gao, the largest city in northern Mali, was seized by a mixture of al-Qaida-linked fighters over nine months ago, and the battle to retake the city is expected to be tough.

The rebel group that turned Gao into a replica of Afghanistan under the Taliban has close ties to Moktar Belmoktar, the Algerian national who has long operated in Mali and who last week, claimed responsibility for the terror attack on a BP-operated natural gas plant in Algeria.

His fighters are believed to include Algerians, Egyptians, Mauritanians, Libyans, Tunisians, Pakistanis and even Afghans.

The French assault began with the capture of the airport, a strategic landing strip that opens the way for easier sorties all over northern Mali.

The further capture of a major bridge leading into the town means that the jihadists “saw their means of transport and their logistics sites destroyed,” French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a statement.

The operation in Gao comes at the same time as airstrikes in the two other provincial capitals held by the extremists — the cities of Timbuktu and Kidal, which like Gao fell to the rebels last April, during the chaotic aftermath of a coup in the distant capital. Nearly 30 bombs have been fired from fighter jets over the past two days, said France’s military in a communique.

The simultaneous aerial attacks comes at the same time that ground troops are carrying out a pincer movement, with French and African land forces heading to Gao from Niger, where Chad has sent a battalion.

French and Malian forces are also heading to Timbuktu, via the central corridor that leads straight north from the Central Malian city of Segou, via the recently recaptured town of Diabaly.

Since France began its military operation, the Islamists have retreated from three small towns in central Mali: Diabaly, Konna and Douentza.

For the first time on Saturday, Malian authorities opened the town of Konna to reporters. Although in most places Malians have applauded the arrival of the French, the town of Konna, built around a single, hard-top road, provides a counterweight and reveals the human toll of the operation.

Konna’s mayor had earlier said that 11 civilians were killed during the airstrikes. Among them were four relatives of Souleymane Maiga, a young, 20-something man who ran for cover on Jan. 11, the first day of the airstrikes.

He hid between two mud walls separating his compound from that of his neighbor. His aunt, and the four children, including several young girls that were with her, abandoned the pot on an open flame where they were preparing the midday meal and ran inside the house.

French combat helicopters, looking for rebels, strafed the buildings made of nothing more than mud mixed with straw.

“The women were preparing food right here in the shade of this tree, when we heard the noise made by the aircraft. I ran and threw myself between the two walls over there,” said Maiga. “After it was over, I went to the house, and when I opened the door, I saw that they were dead. Of the five people inside, only one survived. A toddler. The bodies were one on top of the other. The toddler was crying. The bullets had pierced the door. I tried to find their pulses, but they were gone. I realized it was over. I picked up the child and took him to a relative’s house in town.”

The zinc door of the modest house is pockmarked by bullet holes, some several inches wide. If you close it behind you, they let in jets of light, which illuminate the unlit interior. The can of tomato paste that the women had just opened in order to make a sauce served over rice, still sits where they left it. It had been partially opened, and now the tomato paste inside has spoiled.

___

Larson reported from Sevare, Mali. Jamey Keaten in Dakar, Senegal and Baba Ahmed in Konna, Mali, contributed to this report.

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Singer Tina Turner on path to Swiss citizenship

(Reuters) – Soul music legend Tina Turner has taken the first steps toward giving up her U.S. passport and becoming a citizen of Switzerland, the country she has called home for nearly 20 years.

The Zurich suburb of Kusnacht has approved Swiss citizenship for the “Proud Mary” singer, pending confirmation from other authorities in the country, a spokeswoman for Turner said on Friday.

Turner, who was born in Tennessee, moved to Switzerland in 1995 to join her German-born record producer partner Erwin Bach and has lived there since. She enjoys the privacy she receives there and has no plans to live elsewhere, the spokeswoman said.

“I’m very happy in Switzerland and I feel at home here,” Turner, 73, was quoted as telling the Swiss daily newspaper Blick.

The eight-time Grammy winner retired from performing after her last tour, which ended 2009. Her hits with Ike Turner and as a solo artist include “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” “Private Dancer” and “River Deep – Mountain High.”

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine, editing by Jill Serjeant and Xavier Briand)

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Cycling-Armstrong, US Anti-Doping Agency squabble over further probe

Jan 26 (Reuters) – An attorney for Lance Armstrong said the disgraced cyclist will not meet the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency‘s deadline for him to answer questions under oath, and suggested his client would rather participate in international efforts to “clear the air.”

In a letter to the USADA dated on Friday, attorney Timothy Herman said that while the athlete is willing to cooperate with the agency, its request to interview him in the next two weeks “cannot be accommodated.”

Herman blamed pre-existing obligations.

The USADA set a Feb. 6 deadline for Armstrong to fully cooperate in its investigation in return for a possible lifting of his lifetime ban from cycling, the agency’s chief executive Travis Tygart said in an excerpt from an interview due to air on the CBS “60 Minutes” program on Sunday.

After years of denials, Armstrong confessed last week in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that he used performance-enhancing drugs to cheat his way to a record seven Tour de France wins.

The USADA last year stripped Armstrong of his titles and called him a “serial cheat.”

In his letter, Herman raised questions about the role of the USADA in ridding cycling of performance-enhancing drugs. He noted that “professional cycling is and has been largely a European sport.”

Herman applauded the International Cycling Union’s announcement on Friday that it would work with the World Anti-Doping Agency in a broad probe into the use of drugs and rely on a “truth and reconciliation” process.

“As such, we would like to make sure we coordinate with the truth and reconciliation process to examine the culture of doping in cycling in the past and to clear the air so that cycling can move forward,” Herman wrote.

On Wednesday USADA general counsel William Bock III sent Herman a letter saying that Armstrong’s admissions to Winfrey “removed any possible impediment to his cooperation with USADA.”

“Your client has a great deal of information that is needed to clean up cycling; the time has clearly come for him to sit down with USADA and provide detailed information under oath and on the record regarding his doping and all potential anti-doping rule violations of others of which he has knowledge,” Bock wrote.

Armstrong, 41, said in his interview with Winfrey on her cable network OWN that the lifetime ban against him is like a “death penalty.”

He added that he had no ambitions to return to professional cycling but would like to compete in sanctioned athletic events. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Nick Carey in Chicago; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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‘Low awareness’ of energy bill help

26 January 2013 Last updated at 11:29 ET

Fewer than half of UK households eligible for help with their energy bills are aware that they qualify for assistance, according to a survey.

The Home Heat Helpline found 49% of the 1,951 people surveyed realised they qualified for some form of help.

The findings by the independent advice service come amid rising energy prices and cold weather in recent weeks.

Energy minister Greg Barker urged people to check if they were eligible for help such as home insulation.

The Home Heat Helpline, funded by six major energy providers and established by the Energy Retail Association, estimates that about 3.4 million household in the UK could benefit from some form of assistance.

It provides a free, confidential service that connects people on low incomes with support which it says is worth about £160 on average.

The assistance available includes grants for insulation, new boilers, discount and rebate schemes.

The research, conducted online on behalf of the helpline in October 2012 by the New Policy Institute and Censuswide, found that 32% of those surveyed did not know whether or not they qualified for assistance.

Regional disparity

Just 38% of respondents had contacted their energy supplier or the Home Heat Helpline to ask whether any help was available.

Some 42% of respondents in Scotland had contact their supplier or the helpline, as had 40% in the north-east of England and 36% in south-east England. But only nine per cent of those in Northern Ireland had checked.

Christine McGourty from the Home Heat Helpline said people could ring on behalf of friends, family and neighbours.

Energy and Climate Change minister Greg Barker said: “We know people are struggling with rising energy bills but a warm home should be a given, not a luxury.”

The helpline established a “safety net” procedure in 2004 to ensure vulnerable customers were not disconnected from gas or electricity supplies.

Various criteria are used to determine those who qualify for help, although they tend to include household incomes of less than £16,000.

Risk of illness

Householders may have children, receive some other form benefits, have a disability or be elderly.

The helpline can be reached on 0800 33 66 99.

Earlier this month, Save the Children said children living in fuel poverty – or families unable to heat their homes without spending more that 10% of income – were at greater risk of suffering conditions like asthma, respiratory problems and other illnesses.

It said many eligible families in Wales had never heard of the Warm Homes Discount (WHD) programme.

Last year the government said it wanted to introduce legislation to make bills simpler for consumers.

Its proposals included an element of compulsion, ensuring customers are put on the cheapest deal in the price plan that they choose.

Labour has called for a new energy regulator to be created.

In December, the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee told the energy regulator, Ofgem, stronger action was needed to ensure energy customers received a fair deal.

BBC News – Business

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Medical aid group: Thousands flee Congo fighting

GOMA, Congo (AP) — Thousands of people are without access to medical care and their lives at risk after they fled fighting between the army and a local militia in southeastern Congo in recent days, Doctors Without Borders said Friday.

The exodus from villages and into the bush follows an army operation that started two weeks ago in Katanga province against loyalists of Gedeon Kyungu Mutanga, a local warlord who escaped in a mass prison break in 2011 while serving a conviction of crimes against humanity.

Doctors Without Borders said thousands of people can no longer access its medical facilities, most children in its nutrition programs have left, and a measles vaccination campaign has been suspended — just as malaria cases spike with the onset of the rainy season.

The group said it wasn’t clear how many people had fled, but a string of villages had emptied.

“The population is really afraid. The clashes have brought back a lot of terrible memories for these people. There have been rumors about troops’ movement and people fled into the bush,” said Anne Marie Loof, a worker with the international aid group who recently came back from a mission in the region.

Between 2003 and 2006, Gedeon’s militia burned and pillaged countless villages, was behind hundreds of killings, and provoked the displacement of more than 150,000 people in the area — since nicknamed the “Triangle of Death” by some locals.

He was arrested in 2006 and convicted of crimes against humanity in a landmark trial for Congolese justice three years later.

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BlackRock to buy $80 million Twitter stake: source

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, has taken an $ 80 million stake in Twitter Inc, a person with knowledge of the deal said Friday.

The six-year old social media company will not raise new capital as part of the private deal that values the firm at more than $ 9 billion. BlackRock will buy shares directly from early Twitter employees seeking to liquidate their stock holdings and options.

Twitter’s new valuation represents a slight rise from late 2011, when the company facilitated a similar tender offer with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia that valued the company at a reported $ 8.4 billion.

Twitter sought investors for another tender offer last summer in the wake of Facebook Inc‘s botched initial public offering in May, but did not complete the deal until recently, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

In recent years other tech companies including Facebook, Groupon Inc and SurveyMonkey have used similar transactions to cash out existing employees and delay an initial public offering. Twitter itself is rumored to be a potential IPO prospect within two years.

Several hundred Twitter employees, including many who joined the company before 2009, will be eligible to sell their shares as part of the transaction.

(Reporting By Gerry Shih; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Dr. Phil to interview alleged girlfriend hoaxer

NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. Phil McGraw has booked the first on-camera interview with the man who allegedly concocted the girlfriend hoax that ensnared Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o.

A “Dr. Phil Show” spokesperson confirmed on Friday the interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo (roh-NY-ah too-ee-AH’-so-SO’-poh), the man accused of creating an online persona of a nonexistent woman who Te’o said he fell for without ever meeting face-to-face.

The ruse was uncovered last week by Deadspin.com, which reported that Tuiasosopo created the woman, named Lennay Kekua, who then supposedly died last September.

No further details of the “Dr. Phil” interview, including its airdate, were announced.

This interview follows the first on-camera interview with Te’o conducted this week by Katie Couric.

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Actor Burt Reynolds reportedly in intensive care with flu

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – American actor Burt Reynolds is battling the flu in the intensive care unit of a Florida hospital, CNN reported on Friday.

The “Smokey and the Bandit” actor arrived at the unnamed hospital with dehydration and was later transferred to intensive care, Reynolds’ manager, Erik Kritzer, told CNN.

“He is doing better at this time,” Kritzer was quoted as saying on Friday afternoon. “We expect, as soon as he gets more fluids, he will be back in a regular room.”

Reynolds, 76, is famous for roles in 1970s movies including “Deliverance” and “The Longest Yard.” More recently, he won a Golden Globe award for his role as a porn king in 1997 film “Boogie Nights.”

Reynolds had heart bypass surgery in 2010.

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Xavier Briand)

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