Riots in France intensify; Chirac says restoring order is a ‘priority’

Tom Hundley,… Riots in France intensify; Chirac says restoring order is a ‘priority’

Tom Hundley, Chicago Tribune

PARIS – As violent disturbances intensified Sunday in cities across France, President Jacques Chirac said that restoring public order and security was his government’s “absolute priority.”

Chirac, who has been nearly invisible during 11 days of the worst unrest France has experienced since the student protests of 1968, warned that “those who want to sow violence [and] fear, they will be arrested, judged and punished.”

But his words did little to deter the angry young men who live in the squalid housing projects that ring the outskirts of Paris, Nantes, Orleans, Rennes, Rouen and other cities. As darkness settled, they were out again in force, setting fire to cars, buses and shops, terrorizing their neighborhoods and reveling in self-destructive violence.

Rioters armed with bricks, baseball bats and Molotov cocktails clashed with police in the southern city of Toulouse.

In St. Etienne, a city in central France, rioters attacked a bus, forcing the passengers off before setting it on fire. The driver and one passenger were injured. City officials announced that they were shutting down public transport until further notice.

Near Paris, the violence spread to the southern suburb of Grigny, where rioters allegedly shot at police with hunting rifles, according to French television. Two policemen were reported to have been hospitalized with serious injuries.

Since the trouble began, at least 800 people have been arrested and 3,500 to 4,000 vehicles have been torched, mostly in the outlying districts of Paris, according to the unofficial tallies of various news outlets.

Tornado rips across Kentucky and Indiana, killing at least 22

Tonya Maxwell and Josh Noel, Chicago Tribune

EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Hearing the winds whip outside his mobile home and the sound of breaking glass, Dustin Watts ordered his wife to get in the bathtub and then went to get his sons, ages 5 and 2.

Watts, 28, doesn’t know what happened next. But he thinks the tornado that killed at least 22 people when it struck northern Kentucky and southern Indiana early Sunday tossed his home into the air.

“I don’t know if it flipped over, but it felt like it did,” Watts said as he sat on the concrete steps that used to lead to his trailer, but on Sunday afternoon connected to nothing. The frame of his trailer sat about 20 feet away in Eastbrook Mobile Home Park outside Evansville, Ind.

Though one of his boys suffered head injuries and was hospitalized, Watts and the rest of his family were relatively lucky compared to their neighbors in the trailer park, the site of the most fatalities from the tornado. By Sunday evening, Vanderburgh County officials estimated that at least 17 people had been killed in the trailer park, where 144 of the 350 mobile homes were either obliterated or left uninhabitable. Five other people died in nearby Warrick County, Ind.

In one Afghan province, mother of six proves unbeatable as politician

Kim Barker, Chicago Tribune

HERAT, Afghanistan – Fauzia Gailani is an unlikely election winner in this conservative, western city: an aerobics instructor, a mother of six, and, most obviously, a woman.

But somehow, Gailani won 16,885 votes in the recent parliamentary race, more than any other candidate in Herat province and more than any other woman in Afghanistan. Only 20 men nationwide won more votes than Gailani. Her campaign posters hang in people’s living rooms and stores. Women talk about how she has helped them lose weight and how she’s better than any man. Men talk about her as if she’s a sex symbol.

“I love her,” said Nazer Ahmad, a police officer who voted for Gailani.

Her victory is all the more shocking because it happened in Herat, the province where the one-time conservative governor oppressed women almost as much as the Taliban he replaced. It’s just one sign of how life has changed for women since strongman Ismail Khan was removed as provincial governor in September 2004.

Under Khan, it was rare to see a woman on the streets of Herat, even in a burqa. Now women shop in the markets. Although many still are in burqas, some wear the Iranian-style chador, which cloaks a woman in black but shows her face. Women work in some shops, and a few even have a driver’s license.

Not everything has changed, though. Women still set themselves on fire to protest unwanted marriages. Although some women have driver’s licenses, they rarely drive. One woman in a burqa chastised another for wearing only a headscarf.