Free Republic

Despite nearly 1,000 cars being set ablaze, hundreds of thousands of people in France welcomed the New Year with largely peaceful celebrations, according to Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau. Retailleau announced late on Wednesday that 984 cars went up in flames across the country. Some 420 people were arrested, 310 of whom were taken into police custody. The minister called the figures unacceptable. "This violence is the product of a brutalization embodied by cowards and thugs who attack the property of often humble French people who do not have the means to protect their vehicles in private car parks." But the...

Quetta, Pakistan - Assailants torched more than 20 tankers in Pakistan carrying fuel for U.S. and NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan on Thursday, in the first reported attack since Islamabad closed the border to protest coalition airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops last month. Several hundred trucks have been stranded at poorly guarded terminals around the country as they wait for Pakistan to reopen its two border crossings into Afghanistan. Around 40 percent of the non-lethal supplies for U.S.-led troops in landlocked Afghanistan travel across Pakistani soil.

The anti-Gaddafi uprising, the bloodiest yet against a long-serving ruler in the Arab world, has knocked out nearly half the country’s daily oil output of 1.6million barrels, the bedrock of its economy. Fierce fighting raged in five towns and cities yesterday following Friday prayers, with both pro-Gaddafi and rebel forces launching offensives and counter-offensives. Witnesses reported 50 dead and 300 wounded in the key city of Zawiyah, 30 miles west of the capital Tripoli, in an intensive artillery barrage by Gaddafi’s forces on a heavily-populated civilian area. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362962/Major-Libyan-oil-plant-ablaze-rebellions-erupt-Tripoli-Friday-prayers.html#ixzz1FgjvKAhw

Despite two years of trying to trim lucrative overtime pay for city firefighters, more than a dozen pulled in $100,000, or more, in OT last year, a Daily News analysis shows. Fifteen of the 17 firefighters earned more in overtime pay than their base salaries, and two made more than $175,000 in OT that bumped their gross pay to more than $268,000 - about $5,000 more than their boss, Chief William Bamattre. With base pay, OT and other pay and bonuses, firefighters and their bosses accounted for nearly two-thirds of the 100 city workers who earned more than $200,000 last...

Smouldering rebellion against Saudi rule threatens to set country ablaze By John R Bradley in Sakaka, Saudi Arabia 28 January 2004 The tiny city of Sakaka, the capital of Saudi Arabia's remote al-Jouf province that borders Iraq, may seem an unlikely setting for the beginning of a popular, violent revolution against the ruling Saud family. But you do not have to spend too long here to realise this is what is happening. Al-Jouf has been witness to an extraordinary level of political violence in recent months. The deputy governor, say locals, was assassinated. Also killed was the police chief and...

<p>BEIJING — A laid-off Chinese worker set himself on fire in Tiananmen Square (search) in central Beijing early Wednesday on China's National Day and was hospitalized with injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency (search) said. The report said his motive was unknown.</p>