Strikes test relevance of France's leading militant union

May 31, 2016

NOTRE-DAME-DE-GRAVENCHON, France (AP) — Outside Gate A of the ExxonMobil oil refinery, the strike was fizzling. Few had walked off the job. The complex was humming. As members of hard-left General Confederation of Labor gathered for a meeting, the event was crashed by counter-demonstrators.

"I want to be able to work," said Corinne Cavaille, 43, one of the 50-odd people who'd come to voice their opposition to the union, known by its French acronym CGT. Within an hour, the strike was off.

Despite all the disruption of this month's revolt against French labor reforms — fuel shortages, blocked bridges and street protests — there are signs that France's unions are losing power to mobilize workers. Some employees want less confrontational tactics, others worry about scaring away foreign employers.

For the CGT, the most militant of the two leading unions, it means that the fight against the government is also becoming a fight for relevance. "It's been about 20 years since unions have forced a government to back down," said Stephane Sirot, a historian of the French labor movement at the University of Cergy-Pontoise. "If the movement finishes once more in failure, it might make further mobilization more complicated."

May's fight is centered on the Socialist government's slate of proposals aimed at loosening restrictions on working hours, layoffs and compensation — all in the hope of bringing extra flexibility to France's arthritic job market.

Talk to anyone in Le Havre, an industrial town ringed by container ports and oil refineries which have been wracked by industrial action, and you'd get any number of reasons for the anger that's disrupted the country: record arms sales to foreign governments, clampdowns on civil liberties and an overall sense that France's ruling Socialists have betrayed their base.

For France's biggest militant union, it's also a way to keep its sway over the country's politics. "The CGT is losing steam," said Denis Jamet, a 65-year-old retiree making his way through Le Havre's unusually quiet city center Wednesday. "They're trying to stay relevant."

Only about 8 to 11 percent of the workforce in France is unionized. But their influence reaches beyond that, mainly through workplace elections of union representatives and the ability to negotiate industry-wide deals on behalf of non-unionized members. The recent ferment has a lot do with those elections, whose results are due in 2017, according to Dominique Andolfatto, a professor of political science at the University of Burgundy. The CGT, a union closely associated with the French Communist Party and the events of May 1968 — when the French government was nearly brought to its knees by a massive strike — is on the defensive in the face of gains by more dovish unions like French Confederation of Labor, known by its French acronym CFDT.

"These blockages are a sign of strength, but one can also argue that they're a sign of weakness," said Andolfatto. "If they were really that powerful they would do classic strikes, or massive protests. But they're having trouble mobilizing that many people."

Last week's debate outside the ExxonMobil gave some hint as to how globalization weighs against 1968-style action, even in a country with relatively modest levels of foreign direct investment. As strikers and counterdemonstrators hashed it out, one non-striker warned that "this refinery belongs to people in the United States. ... If we show this image, foreign companies are going to leave."

Another, who gave his name only as Denis, took the microphone to warn that the number of French refineries had fallen from 12 to only eight in the past decade. "If you block the refinery every time you have a grievance how many more are going to be left?" he said.

The CGT and its allies have had more success elsewhere. Le Havre's oil terminal, responsible for 40 percent of France's oil imports, has been either completely or partially closed by strike action since last week. On Thursday, at least 10,000 people, led by striking dock workers and the CGT, descended on Le Havre's City Hall with a percussion band, powerful fireworks and paint bombs, decorating the grey, 1950s building with red-blue-and-yellow splatters.

"We're going back to '68," said Yamina Berriouche, a 46-year-old protester who struggled to make herself heard over the drums and the explosions. "People are angry." Union-watchers say the fight between the CGT and the government is too close to call. On the one hand President Francois Hollande and his combative Prime Minister Manuel Valls are both unpopular and their reforms have divided the Socialist party. On the other hand, the more conciliatory CFDT has backed the reforms and many French people — like the Le Havre brasserie owner who said he'd like to go on strike against the strikers — are losing patience with the CGT and its mustachioed leader, Philippe Martinez.

Both sides have hinted at compromise in recent days as France's attention turns to the European Championship soccer tournament. "Martinez is a big soccer fan," said Andolfatto, the academic. "He doesn't want to screw up the Euros."

If Hollande and Valls fold, it will leave the Socialist Party hobbling into next year's presidential election, when it will be challenged by the right-wing Republicans and the far-right National Front. But if the CGT fails to win the withdrawal of the reforms, it risks accelerating its slide into second place behind its CFDT rival and "consolidating a more practical-minded unionism," according to Andolfatto.

He was quick to caution that still wouldn't mean the disappearance of France's notorious strikes. "There's a kind of revolutionary passion in France," said Andolfatto. "That won't be eradicated right away."

Heavy rain drenches swaths of France, disrupts French Open

May 31, 2016

PARIS (AP) — Heavy rain drenched parts of France on Tuesday, prompting flood warnings near the English Channel, causing more delays at the French Open and soaking tourists in Paris. Floods or heavy rain were forecast for about a quarter of the country Tuesday, from Normandy in the west to Burgundy southeast of Paris.

Rescue workers evacuated homes or ordered people to higher floors in the Pas-de-Calais region in the far north as rivers rose more than a meter (3 feet) in some spots, according to local authorities. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urged people to exercise the "greatest caution." He said rescue services were deployed 4,500 times overnight and Tuesday morning to help people affected by rising water. No casualties were reported.

The national meteorological service, Meteo France, warned of possible exceptionally dangerous floods in the Loiret region, south of Paris. France has seen rain and storms now for several days. During a sudden storm Saturday, a lightning bolt struck a children's birthday party at a Paris park. Five of the 11 people hit remained hospitalized Tuesday.

All matches at the French Open were cancelled Monday, the first all-day shutdown in 16 years. Matches got underway on Tuesday, but play was soon disrupted again by rain. Canadian tourist Helene Gazaille, who was visiting Paris to celebrate her 50th birthday, was determined to have a good trip even if that meant stuffing plastic bags into her sneakers in the morning and using a hair dryer to dry them out at night.

Others like Tang Jiru, a 26-year-old Chinese groom-to-be, looked on the bright side of the gray weather. Posing for photos with his fiancee in the Trocadero's Warsaw fountains, across from the Eiffel Tower, he said he was pleased despite — or maybe even because of — the driving rain.

"The weather, it's like blue. Blue means romantic," he said, his white tie-tuxedo-and-waistcoat combo becoming increasingly wet as his 27-year-old bride-to-be, Liu Yuan Yuan, smiled in her rain-sodden wedding dress.

"Every time you take a photo, it's a sunny day. But it's a rainy day, (so) oh it's special!" said Tang, who is getting married in September in Shanghai but had flown to Paris for the express purpose of taking romantic photos.

Raphael Satter in Paris contributed to this report.

German, French leaders mark 100 years since Battle of Verdun

May 29, 2016

VERDUN, France (AP) — In solemn ceremonies Sunday in the forests of eastern France, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel marked 100 years since the Battle of Verdun, determined to show that, despite the bloodbath of World War I, their countries' improbable friendship is now a source of hope for today's fractured Europe.

The 10-month battle at Verdun — the longest in World War I — killed 163,000 French and 143,000 German soldiers and wounded hundreds of thousands of others. Between February and December 1916, an estimated 60 million shells were fired in the battle. One out of four didn't explode. The front line villages destroyed in the fighting were never rebuilt. The battlefield zone still holds millions of unexploded shells, making the area so dangerous that housing and farming are still forbidden.

With no survivors left to remember, Sunday's commemorations were focused on educating youth about the horrors and consequences of the war. Some 4,000 French and German children were taking part in the day's events, which conclude at a mass grave where, in 1984, then-French President Francois Mitterrand took then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's hand in a breakthrough moment of friendship and trust by longtime enemy nations.

"Verdun is the more than the name of your town — Verdun is also one of the most terrible battles humanity has experienced," Merkel said in a speech at city hall, calling Hollande's invitation to join the centenary "a great honor."

"We are all called upon to keep awake the memory (of Verdun) in the future, because only those who know the past can draw lessons from it," the German leader said. Hollande praised the city of Verdun as "the capital of peace."

"Verdun is a city that represents — at the same time — the worst, where Europe got lost, and the best, a city being able to commit and unite for peace and French-German friendship," he said. Merkel said the commemorations show "how good relations between Germany and France are today" and the achievements of European unity.

"In a world with global challenges, it is important to keep developing this Europe," she said in a weekly address Saturday, expressing hope that Britain would not vote to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum.

Amid rising support for far right parties and divisions among European countries over how to handle refugees, Hollande said he wants to work alongside Merkel to "relaunch the European ideal." "We must take action ... at a moment when Europe is affected by the disease of populism," he told France Culture radio this week. He also noted the threat from violent extremism, saying the EU "must protect the people," especially against "terrorism."

Hollande and Merkel spent the entire day together. In the morning, he welcomed his German counterpart under heavy rain at the German cemetery of Consenvoye, near Verdun, where 11,148 German soldiers are buried. They laid a wreath, accompanied by four German and French children, and walked side by side for few minutes in the cemetery, sharing an umbrella.

After lunch, they were visiting the newly renovated Verdun Memorial. The museum, which reopened in February, immerses visitors in the "hell of Verdun" through soldiers' belongings, documents and photos, and from its new rooftop, they can observe the battlefield.

"The visit follows the steps of the soldiers. First reaching the front, moving into shell holes, fighting, surviving on the front line, the daily life," said historian Antoine Prost. Verdun has become a common place of remembrance because "it's a place of massive death equivalent for the French and the Germans," Prost added.

The main ceremony will take place in the afternoon at the Douaumont Ossuary, a memorial to 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers. The ceremony conceived by German filmmaker Volker Schloendorff will include children re-enacting battlefield scenes to the sound of drums amid thousands of white crosses marking the graves.

Bank of England's new 5-pound note features Churchill

June 02, 2016

LONDON (AP) — Britain's new five-pound note features the image of World War II leader Winston Churchill — and comes with a promise that it can stand up to all his favorite things. That means the new polymer notes can survive a splash of Claret, a flick of cigar ash and the nip of a bulldog.

Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney unveiled the full new design of the note Thursday at Churchill's birthplace in Oxfordshire. The new fiver will be printed on polymer, a thin flexible plastic film. The current note features prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. When the new design was announced in 2013, an outcry followed because no woman would appear on Britain's cash aside from that of Queen Elizabeth II.

Novelist Jane Austen was later chosen for the 10-pound note.

Study suggests dogs first appeared in 2 places in Eurasia

June 02, 2016

NEW YORK (AP) — The long-debated question of where dogs first appeared has always been complex, and now a new study suggests it may have two answers. Dogs arose from the domestication of wolves, and the new work suggests this happened twice, once in Asia and also in either Europe or the Near East.

"We were slightly surprised," since domestic animals usually have a single origin, said lead study author Laurent Frantz of Oxford University. In a paper released Thursday by the journal Science, he and co-authors stressed that their conclusion is only a hypothesis, and that more work is needed to assess it.

Dogs were the first domesticated animal, the only one to appear before people settled down to be farmers. They evolved from wolves that had begun to associate with people, perhaps drawn by food the people left behind.

The study drew on genetics and archaeological records. It included a complete genome from a dog that lived in Ireland about 4,800 years ago and more limited DNA from 59 European dogs that lived 14,000 to 3,000 years ago. The ancient DNA was compared to genetic data for 685 modern dogs.

The complex analysis led to this proposed scenario: Dogs arose from wolves in Asia and from a different wolf population in Europe or the Near East. Then, the Asian dogs traveled west along with humans. They arrived on the turf of the other dogs between about 6,000 and 14,000 years ago and partially replaced them or interbred with them, establishing a new population that is genetically different from Asian dogs.

Many dogs today show some genetic heritage from both the eastern and western groups of dogs, Frantz said. Adam Boyko of Cornell University, who has proposed a central Asia origin for dogs but didn't participate in the new study, said he found the dual-origin idea intriguing. More samples of DNA from ancient dogs will be needed to support it, he said.

Last call for owners to claim cars left in 1974 Cyprus war

May 26, 2016

EPISKOPI, Cyprus (AP) — It's last call for the owner to reclaim a late 1950s Dodge Coronet, shades of sky-blue paint still visible on its tailfins, that's been rusting on a British military base for over four decades.

The lone Dodge sits among some 400 vehicles — including Land Rovers, Fiats, Lambretta mopeds and Bedford trucks — that were abandoned by the Turkish Cypriot owners inside the Episkopi Garrison amid the confusion of a 1974 war that cleaved Cyprus along ethnic lines.

The vehicles have sat since inside this wind-swept, fenced-off field for safe-keeping. But the relentless Mediterranean sun and humidity, coupled with a huge brushfire that swept through the field 15 years ago, have turned more than half of them into little more than rusting hulks.

Now, base authorities are hoping to reawaken the interest of owners — either in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot northern part of the island or abroad — to reclaim the vehicles before their disposal starts next year.

"We have to make the effort to give them back before we start disposing of them, it's the proper thing to do," said Ian Brayshaw, a British Bases official in charge of the project. The overwhelming majority of the vehicles are of little value other than scrap metal. But there are a few gems that could be worth some money, including the aluminum-framed Land Rover Mark 1 and a decrepit Volkswagen Beetle that is said to be worth as much as 2,000 euros ($2,230) despite its condition, Brayshaw said.

It doesn't all necessarily boil down to money — the sentimental value can't be brushed aside. There have so far been around two dozen inquiries about the vehicles, with the son-in-law of one man who used to own a bus fleet making the trip to look at six bus carcasses.

"He was quite emotional because of the obvious history of the buses," Brayshaw said. "He was grateful for the efforts of the bases to give the vehicles back, but disappointed at their condition." Many of the vehicles, some vandalized and damaged, were abandoned on streets of RAF Akrotiri — a British air base in the island's southern, Greek Cypriot half.

With tensions running high immediately after an invasion Turkey mounted in response to a coup aiming to unite Cyprus with Greece, Turkish Cypriots couldn't drive their vehicles out of the base. Instead, the refugees were flown out from RAF Akrotiri and taken to Turkey before ending up in the island's Turkish-controlled northern part with whatever belongings they could carry with them.

"The sad thing for me is when you see a child's toy in the backseat of a car and it makes you think about how serious this all was, it was war," Brayshaw said. Some Turkish Cypriots have come forward over the years to reclaim mostly agricultural equipment, said Brayshaw.

Owners have until the end of the year to claim their vehicles. Those that aren't reclaimed will either be sold for scrap or auctioned off. Brayshaw said all the money raised will go to projects helping the Turkish Cypriot community.

Photos of most of the cars, trucks, tractors and motorbikes are posted on the base website for owners — and others who may be interested — to peruse. Anyone who wishes to take a vehicle is responsible for all transport costs.

Uganda, South Korea leaders sign co-operation agreements

May 29, 2016

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda and South Korea signed cooperation agreements Sunday that officials here hope will lead to transfer of technology as Uganda tries to implement an ambitious industrialization program.

The memorandums of understanding in areas such as health and education were signed at Uganda's State House in Entebbe, where visiting South Korean leader Park Geun-hye and her delegation were given a banquet. Details of the agreements were not yet available.

"There is a great potential for co-operation between South Korea and Uganda for the mutual benefit of both countries," Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said during the banquet, according to his office.

Uganda is the second leg of Park's Africa visit, during which she has focused on trade and business. In a speech Friday before the African Union in Ethiopia, Park urged African leaders to support international efforts to denuclearize rival North Korea.

Uganda has good diplomatic relations with North Korea, which has recently been training Ugandan security forces. Museveni said Sunday that he supports the peaceful reunification of Korea. Park's next stop is Kenya.