French strikers protest government policies

French strikers protestgovernment policies
PARIS -- Tens of thousands of French transportation workers and teachers held a nationwide strike Tuesday to protest the government's economic and labor policies, slowing the train and bus systems and closing schools throughout the country. Commuters were jammed into those trains and buses still running while many flights through Paris airports were canceled. Schools closed as almost 230,000 teachers stayed home, the Education Ministry said. So, too, did about 15 percent of postal workers, according to the mail service. Newspapers were not delivered in Paris. The national rail operator said all Paris stations were disrupted, with about two-thirds of morning trains from the suburbs canceled. Services were disrupted on all but one of Paris' Metro lines. The subway system in Lyon, in the southeast, stopped completely. One in four morning rush hour buses and three in four trams were operating in southwestern Bordeaux, authorities there said. Many commuters at Paris' Saint-Lazare station, arriving on packed trains from the suburbs, said despite the inconvenience, they supported the one-day walkout to defend jobs, salaries and labor rights. Unions are especially angry about labor laws passed by the center-right government in August, which make it easier for small companies to hire and fire workers.
Government to clean upWWII-era chemical plant
YAKIMA, Wash. -- State and federal officials announced Tuesday a plan to clean up a highly contaminated World War II-era chemical plant at Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation. The U-Plant Canyon, one of five massive processing facilities at Hanford, will be razed to ground level, and the highly radioactive waste will be shipped to a repository in New Mexico, officials said Tuesday. The rest of the building will be left underground, which reduces the risk of exposing workers to radiological and chemical contamination, said Keith Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland Operations Office. The contaminated equipment will be sealed with grout, and the underground area will be capped with soil and vegetation. U Plant was one of the original processing canyons built during World War II. The building is 800 feet long, 70 feet wide and 80 feet high, with more than 30 feet underground. Its reinforced concrete floor is 4 feet thick. Cleanup is set to start in 2008.
New recommendationsfor feeding toddlers
DALLAS -- As toddlers begin eating "grown-up" food, they may also develop grown-up eating habits -- such as too much junk food and too few vegetables, warn doctors who want parents to change their ways. Within the childhood obesity outbreak is an increasing number of overweight 2-year-olds, according to pediatrics experts. In an effort to address the problem, the American Heart Association is offering this advice to parents: Children 2 and older should eat mostly fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat and nonfat dairy products, beans, fish and lean meat. "These guidelines are not that different from what you as a parent should be following," said Lona Sandon, a dietitian and assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "Kids will follow the example of their parents if the example is there." The new recommendations for infants, children and adolescents revise the heart association's 1982 statement. Since then, more and more children have been falling into the overweight or obese category.
Mother is buried with son21 years after her death
HYDERABAD, India -- A man who kept the embalmed body of his mother at home in a glass casket for 21 years was buried along with her after his death, a relative said Tuesday. Hundreds of residents attended the burials of Syed Abdul Ghafoor, 69, and his mother Sunday at a mosque in Siddavata, a town 300 miles south of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state. "I fulfilled the last wish of my uncle. He had told us that his mother's body should be buried only after his death," said his nephew, Syed Noor. Ghafoor, who taught English literature at a college in the Thanjavur district of southern Tamil Nadu in the 1980s, divorced his wife after six months of marriage because she had a fight with his mother, Noor said. When the mother died, he brought the embalmed body to his home in Siddavata and kept it in a glass casket. "He was so eccentric that he would not allow anybody else even to look at the glass casket," Noor said. Ghafoor consulted his mother even after her death. Before doing anything important, Ghafoor would write "yes" and "no" on two pieces of paper. Then, sitting at the feet of the mother's body, he would select one piece of paper without looking at what it said and act accordingly, Noor said.