SOUTHEAST ASIA: New fighting on the border between Thailand and Cambodia

AFP - fighting with heavy weapons broke out Saturday between Thai and Cambodian troops at the disputed border between the two countries in the aftermath of clashes that left six people dead, officials said the two sides.

"The new fighting started around 6:00 (23HOO GMT Friday) with gunfire and mortar shells" in the same place Friday around a disputed group of temples, said a spokesman for the Thai army in the region, Colonel Prawit Hookaew.

"We are negotiating to stop the fighting," he added.

Phnom Penh has confirmed new incidents.

"The fighting started at 6:15," said the spokesman of the Ministry of Defence Chhum Socheat, adding that the artillery was used.

No new casualties have yet been reported.

Friday, soldiers from the two neighbors had clashed for more than six hours, killing three of them in each camp and forcing thousands of villagers to be evacuated on the Thai side.

Phnom Penh and Bangkok had rejected another the responsibility for opening fire.

These were the first serious incident since early February when the fighting for four consecutive days had killed at least ten people, including seven Cambodian side.The United Nations had called for a cease-fire permanent.

These incidents took place a hundred miles farther east, near the Khmer temple of Preah Vihear.

These ruins of the eleventh century, whose classification by UNESCO in 2008 had rekindled tensions within the sovereignty of Cambodia by a ruling of the International Court of Justice in 1962.

But the Thais its main access control, and both countries claim an area of ​​4.6 km2 below the building that has not been delineated.

The border between the two countries has never been fully demarcated, in particular because of the presence of many mines left behind by decades of civil war in Cambodia.

JAPAN: The shutdown of the plant in Fukushima last between six and nine months

The operator of the nuclear accident in Fukushima (north-eastern Japan) said Sunday it would take about three months to begin to reduce the radioactivity and between six and nine months to cool the reactors.

"We estimate it will take approximately three months to ensure that the radiation level begins to drop," said Tsunehisa Katsumata, president of the board of directors of the company Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO).

"Having completed this first step, it will take three to six months before we can reduce radiation leaks at a very low level," he said at a news conference.

The company says this second stage will aim to achieve "cold shutdown" reactor (cold shutdown), thus allowing the intervention of technicians.

Located 250 km from Tokyo, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (No. 1) was severely damaged by the magnitude 9 earthquake and the giant tsunami that devastated the north-eastern Japan on March 11.

TEPCO and the Japanese authorities have been trying to prevent this incident from escalating nuclear and cause massive radiation leaks.

Mr. Katsumata said the company hoped to "cool the reactors and storage pools of spent fuel so complete and stable."

The cessation of cooling circuits and backup generators is at the origin of the series of incidents that occurred on the site. The staff had to inject huge amounts of water to control the temperature of the fuel.

TEPCO said it would "give priority to prevent hydrogen explosion in Units 1, 2 and 3."The workers will inject nitrogen into the reactor to maintain the lower the ratio between hydrogen and oxygen," the company said in a statement.

A few days after the disaster of March 11, explosions occurred at Units 1 and 3, caused by an accumulation of hydrogen in the building housing the facility.

TEPCO will also strive for not releasing highly radioactive water.

"On the reactor 2, we begin to clean up highly radioactive water in June," said Mr.Katsumata.

The injection and dumping bulk water since March 11 has resulted in highly radioactive water leak in the engine rooms and in trenches adjacent to the facilities, some of which sank in the sea

USA: Justice is a blow to Google's digital library

It was one of the most ambitious of Google. But since Tuesday night, the giant project of the Internet to scan then upload all books published worldwide has suffered a serious setback. A U.S. federal court has decided that this great work "googlesque" was "way too far" and allowed the giant Mountain View (California) to crush the market for online publishing.

More concretely, the American judge Denny Chin ruled, at the request of the Department of Justice on the legality of a 2008 agreement between Google and the two main associations of the U.S. edition: Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.He found that too much to compromise the benefit of Google and found that virtually gave him the right to post any book without permission of the author.

The agreement in question provided for the creation of a fund, fed by Google, to compensate authors. The Internet giant had thus committed $ 125 million. In return, the multinational could quietly continue to scan all books published in English in the world. Authors who did not want to be included in this virtual library were, themselves, notify Google. This posed a problem for books "orphans" - those we can not find the copyright holders.This system has not pleased the judge Denny Chin, who argued that the search had to ask permission to scan books.

"Not only the literature"

The ruling was eagerly awaited. "We are disappointed by the decision because we believe it is important to bring to the world millions of otherwise hard to find books," he lamented in a statement Tuesday night Hilary Sware, spokesman for Google. But the real issue lies elsewhere: it is rather a story of "big money".

It is no coincidence that, in addition to the U.S. Department of Justice, the prosecution received the support of the Open Book Alliance.Which includes the major competitors of Google - starting with Microsoft and Yahoo's agreement, subject to the judge "allowed Google to interfere a little more privacy and awarded him a monopoly in the internet search" said Gary Reback Tuesday night, co-founder of the Open Book Alliance.

For Google, the works are, in fact, not only in literature. Since 1998, Larry Page, co-founder (with Sergey Brin) Google's dream of a virtual digital library that would work hand in hand with its search engine. Since its IPO in 2004, the group began to scan books. It is now more than 15 billion digital works.

Not dead yet

These pages can be very lucrative.Indeed, if users can use Google to search the contents of a book, the search engine benefit to retrieve information about their reading habits - which would sell more personalized advertisements.

Microsoft, which tries to impose its search engine against Google Bing, did not want to see his enemy to raid the market. Others, like Amazon, do not want a new competitor to sell books online. In December 2010, Google has, in fact, the U.S. launched a virtual library.

But the Google project is not dead, however. Judge Denny Chin has hinted that he might reconsider his decision if the agreement was renegotiated.If Google is trying so hard since 2004 to achieve its ends, it is likely he will return to discuss with publishers and authors.

EGYPT: When different generations of critics find themselves in challenging

Who leads the revolt? And who could, if the Egyptian president was leaving office, driving the transition? A week after the start of the protest movement, and while tens of thousands of protesters again gathered Tuesday in downtown Cairo to demand the departure of Hosni Mubarak, no leader has yet to embody the imposed alternative.

"Most opposition parties have very limited ability to mobilize," says Nadim Shehadi, an expert member of the think tank Chatham House in London. These events are not run by the opposition but from the street.The traditional opposition parties have never been at the forefront of this movement. "

Young online activists, spearheaded the protest

According to Nadim Shehadi, the opposition would, however, currently structured. The older generation, fragmented and repressed, joined youth groups cyberactivists who stormed the Web to shake a moribund political landscape for nearly three decades.

Among this new generation of opponents, the Movement of 6 April is one of the main actors of the protest movement, said Samir Shehata, Center for Contemporary Studies in the Arab world of Georgetown University.This movement emerged in 2008 in the wake of the revolt of cotton workers.

Samir Shehata also cites the Kifaya, or Egyptian Movement for Change, one of the spearheads of the dispute. This group, which brings together activists from various trends, emerged in July 2004, launching a campaign against Hosni Mubarak. Kifaya members were particularly far mobilized against the prospect of succession to power of Gamal Mubarak, son of the president.

Kifaya is Arabic for "Enough."A message that resonated in the streets of Cairo and other cities of Egypt such as Cairo or Alexandria, in recent days.

Mohamed el-Baradei, figurehead activists

January 27, Mohamed el-Baradei himself left Vienna, Austria, where he resides, and to return to Egypt to join the protest. The former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which suggested that the transition is a recognized and respected figure on the international scene, but credibility in the local scene is more difficult to establish .

"I think the influence of Mohamed el-Baradei is minimal, said Nadim Shehadi.Before these events, his popularity was very low and his chances of being elected very limited. "

Mohamed ElBaradei, however, an obvious figurehead for the network of activists behind the protest. His National Association for Change, a nonpartisan coalition founded a year ago, rallied all the opposition groups, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, officially banned but tolerated by the regime.

Shortly after the arrival of Mohamed ElBaradei last week, the Muslim Brotherhood said they were seeking to form a broad political committee with the former diplomat.Speaking to a crowd at Tahrir Square in Cairo on Sunday night, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and former MP, Mohammed el-Beltagui said the move "argued Mohamed el-Baradei to drive change." "We're trying to establish a democratic arena, before they can begin to play inside," he added.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a strong presence in the streets since the beginning of the dispute, have networks of charitable associations, schools and hospitals, enabling them to establish their influence in the vast lower class.

A committee of ten persons to lead the transition

Other representatives of the opposition were quick to join Mohamed el-Baradei.Among them, the liberal Wafd party, a great nationalist party founded in 1919 but which now has only a limited audience, the dissident Ayman Nour, who came in second place far behind Hosni Mubarak in the presidential election of 2005; or Osama al-Ghazali Harb, president of the Democratic Front.

According to the U.S. daily The New York Times, the new generation of online activists and opponents older held since Sunday a series of meetings to try to plan a response to a motion. Nadim Shehata says that this coalition has agreed on a list of ten names, including Mohamed ElBaradei, Ayman Nour and Osama al-Ghazali Harb.This committee would lead a unity government if President Hosni Mubarak left the office.

"Young people continue to pursue these discussions," says New York Times Ibrahim Issa, a prominent intellectual of the opposition.

If all these opponents want the departure of the Egyptian president, remains to agree on how to use. Monday, they certainly all called for "a million march" held Tuesday.

FRANCE: Carlos Ghosn explained the case of industrial espionage at Renault

REUTERS - Renault has followed the "usual process" by maintaining secrecy for several months on the internal investigation that led him to dismiss three of its officers suspected of espionage on its electric car program, said Carlos Ghosn, the CEO, in an interview published in the Sunday newspaper.

The prosecution announced January 14 the opening of a preliminary police investigation on this issue.Renault had filed a complaint against X for the day "for acts that constitute industrial espionage, bribery, embezzlement, theft and handling stolen goods, committed by an organized gang."

Ghosn aware since August 2010

If the first public information about the suspicions of the group date from the early, early internal warnings date back nearly five months.

"In late August, the ethics group, Christian Husson, who is also our general counsel, and the boss of Renault's safety came to see me," said Carlos Ghosn in the interview with JDD."They have shared information of very high concern about the integrity of some of our senior staff."

Asked to explain the reasons which led the group to keep the information confidential, he said that "Renault has very specific procedures for such cases.""I decided that the usual process would be used," he adds.

He refused to specify if Renault has used a private investigator to conduct its own investigations.

"Everything we have is now in the hands of justice," says he.

"We were unbeatable"

"It is not for me to go here into details of what we did. But we were blameless in relation to the law," he says.

"An investigation services spy-cons has been open since last week. I repeat, they have all the elements.Today, we expect that justice do its job, "he says.

The three officers covered by the suspicions of Renault, laid off at first, were dismissed. They have since announced the filing of a complaint for malicious prosecution or defamation case to case.

"His target is our strategy in the electric car", explains Carlos Ghosn in the Sunday newspaper. "We launched in 2006 in the most total skepticism.Today, we are the only ones in the world to manufacture both the battery, motors and chargers, to produce the whole system. "

"When a manufacturer is in technological advance, do not be naïve, ca lot of people interested."

He stated that the leaks do not correspond to information "technology" but it could be information on the "economic model" Renault's electric.

Carlos Ghosn assurance that it had "no doubt" the identity of the recipient of such information.

"We await the results of the investigation which I'm told it should last several months," he said.