North Korea shells South in fiercest attack in decades

Reuters) - North Korea fired scores of artillery shells at a South Korean island on Tuesday, killing two soldiers, in one of the heaviest attacks on its neighbor since the Korean War ended in 1953.

The barrage -- the South fired back and sent a fighter jet to the area -- was close to a disputed maritime border on the west of the divided peninsula and the scene of deadly clashes in the past. South Korea was conducting military drills in the area at the time but said it had not been firing at the North.

The attack came as the reclusive North, and its ally China, presses regional powers to return to negotiations on its nuclear weapons program and revelations at the weekend Pyongyang is fast developing another source of material to make atomic bombs.

It also follows moves by leader Kim Jong-il to make his youngest, but unproven, son his heir apparent, leading some analysts to question whether the bombardment might in part have been an attempt to burnish the ruling family's image with the military.

"Houses and mountains are on fire and people are evacuating. You can't see very well because of plumes of smoke," a witness on the island told YTN Television before the shelling, which lasted about an hour, ended.

YTN said at least 200 North Korean shells hit Yeonpyeong, which lies off the west coast of the divided peninsula near a disputed maritime border. Most landed on a military base there.

Photographs from Yeongyeong island, just 120 km (75 miles) west of Seoul, showed columns of smoke rising from buildings. Two soldiers were killed in the attack, 17 wounded. Three civilians were also hurt.

News of the attack rattled global markets, already unsettled by Ireland's debt woes and a shift to less risky assets.

Experts say North Korea's Kim has for decades played a carefully calibrated game of provocation to squeeze concessions from the international community and impress his own military. The risk is that the leadership transition has upset this balance and that events spin out of control.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who has pursued a hard line with the North since taking office nearly three years ago, said a response had to be firm following the attack.

But he made no suggestion the South would retaliate further, suggesting Seoul was taking a measured response to prevent things getting out of hand.

The North has a huge array of artillery pointed at Seoul that could decimate an urban area home to around 25 million people and cause major damage to its trillion dollar economy.

The two Koreas are still technically at war -- the Korean War ended only with a truce -- and tension rose sharply early this year after Seoul accused the North of torpedoing one of its navy vessels, killing 46 sailors.

North Korea said its wealthy neighbor started the fight.

"Despite our repeated warnings, South Korea fired dozens of shells from 1 p.m. ... and we've taken strong military action immediately," its KCNA news agency said in a brief statement.

if u want to see a video that was taken at the moment click this linkhttp://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AM0YS20101123

TV5MONDE

TV5MONDE (French pronunciation: [te ve sɛ̃k mɔ̃d]; formerly known as TV5) is a global television network, broadcasting several channels ofFrench language programming. It is an approved participant member of the European Broadcasting Union

TV5 started in 1 January 1984 and was under the management of Serge Adda until November 2004; the new director, named on 6 April2005 is Jean-Jacques Aillagon, former French Minister for Culture and Communication. The present Director-General is Marie-Christine Saragosse.

In 2006 TV5 underwent a major overhaul including re-branding as "TV5MONDE" to stress its focus as a global network ("Monde" is French for "World"). Also part of the changes are a new schedule and new program line-up. Since 1993, "TV5 Monde" is part of the channel's corporate name. Its Canadian operations are branded "TV5 Québec Canada", however, though the shorter version TV5 is also used.

TV5MONDE is the second most available global television network available around the world ahead of CNN and after MTVMost of its content is taken from mainstream networks in the French-speaking world, notably France Télévisions from France, RTBF fromBelgium, TSR from Switzerland, and the Radio-Canada and TVA networks in Canada. In addition to international news, TV5MONDE broadcasts Ligue 1, films and music magazines.The number "5" in the name is the number of founding networks: TF1, Antenne 2, FR3, RTBF and TSR. Today, the partnership making up the TV5MONDE consortium are Arte (itself a consortium of Franco-German broadcasters), France Télévisions, Institut national de l'audiovisuel, Radio-Canada, Télé-Québec, RTBF and TSR. This consortium owns 51% of the service, while the other 49% is owned bySociété de l'audiovisuel extérieur de la France, a holding company that manages France's international broadcasting services.

German village in South Korea

GERMAN VILLAGE, South Korea - Here in one of the southernmost points of the Korean Peninsula, hours away from the nearest city, a few dozen houses with sloping, red-tiled roofs and large white walls dot the side of a hill. More are under construction, separated from one another by wide, sometimes cobblestone streets.

On closer inspection, as the setting sun enveloped the hill in a warm glow one recent evening, large and, well, German-looking men could be seen standing on a terrace or in a yard next to garden dwarfs and white picket fences. German could be heard, not only from the men, but also from the Koreans here.

German Village, South Korea, only three years old, is an improbable creation, the product of this nation's shifting needs. In the 1960's and 70's, South Korea, poor and overpopulated, sent thousands of its citizens to work as nurses or miners in West Germany. Today, they and their German spouses are being welcomed back, especially in rural areas whose populations have been decimated by urban migration and declining birthrates.

The authorities here, in Namhae County, took the invitation a step further by carving this village from a mountain facing the sea. They offered cheap land and construction subsidies to any Korean nurse or miner who had lived in Germany for at least 20 years, requiring that they build houses in one of five German architectural models. The village will eventually accommodate up to 75 houses.

So far, the village has drawn a small community of Koreans and some Germans, who may not have ever imagined whiling away their retirement days in a corner of South Korea that is visited by few Koreans, though it is famous for its garlic.

"When the opportunity arose, I said, 'Let's go!' right away," said Friedrich-Wilhelm Engel, 76, who built the village's third house with his wife, Woo Chun Ja.

Mr. Engel, a retired air traffic controller, was watching German satellite television on a recent afternoon, waiting for his wife to return from running errands.

"I'm not lonesome here," he said by way of introduction. "In the afternoon, it's very cool here. I do not need to make money anymore. I'm finished. I'm a pensioner. I just work in the garden."

"I came here two and a half years ago from Frankfurt," he added. "My wife was a nurse in Germany for 33 years."

The presence of German speakers, as well as the uncanny re-creation of German village life, drew some 42 Korean German-language students here for a summer program.

"It's about 90 percent German," said one of the German teachers, Kai Schroeder, 41, an assistant professor at Kyeongsang National University. "It's better, or more like a German village, than a German village, because the houses are new and big. It's an idealized expression of German living."

Through the late 1970's, some 8,600 South Korean men went to work as miners in West Germany, joined by 10,400 nurses. Many Koreans married other Koreans; some nurses found German husbands.

Some returned to South Korea after a few years, while others settled in Germany. For the few here, the German Village represents a midpoint between the worlds.

"It's like coming back home," said Kim Woo Ja, 65, who went to West Germany to work as a nurse at 30. "I had always felt the need to come back."

Mrs. Kim spoke in her living room, surrounded by furniture she had brought from Germany. Her husband, Ludwig Straus, 78, was soaking his right foot in a bucket in preparation for a pedicure, while leafing through a history of his hometown, Mainz.

Over the years, she had regularly sent money to her relatives in South Korea. "Everybody did," she said. "Korean nurses, in the 1960's and 1970's, contributed to the development of the Korean economy. That's why we have the Korea we have now."

Others shared more ambivalent feelings.

Bai Jung Il, 65, who went to Germany as a miner four decades ago, sat on the second floor of his half-completed house, cutting a lonely figure as he ate lunch by himself. He intended to keep living in Germany where his wife, a former nurse, and children remain.

"I left when I was 26; I'm now 65," Mr. Bai said. "I'm more accustomed to the customs in Germany and the people there. When I come here, I feel I've come to a foreign country."

Still, he felt the need to visit South Korea sometimes - he could not explain why exactly - and had decided to build this house. Like some immigrants, Mr. Bai was convinced that the standards of his adopted land were superior, in every way, to the country he had left.

So Mr. Bai, who had eventually worked as a home builder in Germany, was overseeing every detail of his house's construction. He did not trust Korean builders, he said, and was also refusing to follow one of the five prescribed designs.

"I'm bringing all the raw material from Germany," he said. "The other houses here are German on the outside but on the inside they're Korean. Only my house will be German on the inside and outside."

Not everybody thinks the village project, at $7.5 million, has been a success so far. Ha Young Je, the head of Namhae County whose predecessor conceived of German Village, said some of the house builders still lived in Germany and rented out their homes. Others, he said, have not become permanent residents here.

"We give them privileges," Mr. Ha said. "But they go to Germany every nine months to renew their residency there. This becomes a holiday home for them."

Still, Namhae County - where the population is fast decreasing and aging - is planning to build an American village for Korean-American retirees. This time, Mr. Ha said, the county will require the new residents to give up their American citizenship, so that they will live here full time.

Others question the wisdom of building a future on a niche group of retirees.

"The people here are already old," Mr. Straus said. "Their children won't come here from Germany. So Koreans will eventually start moving in here. In 10 or 20 years, this German Village will become a Korean Village."

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaull

>>i watched the news on a French channel today and saw this!!

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaull(French pronunciation: [ʃaʁl də ɡol](listen), English: /ˈtʃɑrlz/ or /ˈʃɑrl dəˈɡɔːl/; 22 November 1890 - 9 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forcesduring World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969. ^[1]

A veteran of World War I, in the 1920s and 1930s de Gaulle came to the fore as a proponent of armoured warfare and advocate of military aviation, which he considered a means to break the stalemate of trench warfare. DuringWorld War II, he reached the temporary rank of Brigadier General, leading one of the few successful armoured counter-attacks during the 1940 Fall of France, and then briefly served in the French government as France was falling.

He escaped to Britain and gave a famous radio address, broadcast by theBBC on 18 June 1940, exhorting the French people to resist Nazi Germany^[2] and organised the Free French Forces with exiled French officers inBritain. ^[3]

He gradually obtained control of all French colonies—most of which had at first been controlled by the pro-German Vichy regime—and by the time of the liberation of France in 1944 he was heading a government in exile, insisting that France be treated as an independent great power by the other Allies. De Gaulle became prime minister in the French Provisional Government, resigning in 1946 due to political conflicts. ^[4] After the war he founded his own political party, the RPF. Although he retired from politics in the early 1950s after the RPF's failure to win power, he was voted back to power as prime minister by the French Assembly during the May 1958 crisis. De Gaulle led the writing of a new constitution founding the Fifth Republic, ^[5] and was elected President of France, an office which now held much greater power than in the Third and Fourth Republics. ^[6]

As President, Charles de Gaulle ended the political chaos that preceded his return to power. A new French currency was issued in January 1960 to control inflation and industrial growth was promoted. Although he initially supported French rule over Algeria, he controversially decided to grant independence to that country, ending an expensive and unpopular war but leaving France divided and having to face down opposition from the white settlers and French military who had originally supported his return to power.

De Gaulle oversaw the development of French atomic weapons and promoted a foreign policy of national sovereignty from U.S. and British influence. He withdrew France from NATO military command—although remaining a member of the western alliance—and twice vetoed Britain's entry into the European Community. He travelled widely in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world and recognised Communist China. On a visit to Canada he gave encouragement to Quebec Separatism.

During his term, de Gaulle also faced controversy and political opposition from Communists and Socialists. Despite having been re-elected as President, this time by direct popular ballot, in 1965, in May 1968 he appeared likely to lose power amidst widespread protests by students and workers, but survived the crisis with an increased majority in the Assembly. However, de Gaulle resigned after losing a referendum in 1969. He is considered by many to be the most influential leader in modern French history.

The Grammy Awards

The Grammy Awards (originally called the Gramophone Awards)—orGrammys—are presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States for outstanding achievements in the music industry. The awards ceremony features performances by prominent artists, and some of the awards of more popular interest are presented in a widely viewed televised ceremony. It is the music equivalent to the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for stage, and the Academy Awards for film.

The awards were established in 1958. Prior to the first live Grammys telecast in 1971 on American Broadcasting Company (ABC), a series of taped annual specials in the 1960s called The Best on Record were broadcast on National Broadcasting Company (NBC). The first Grammy Award telecast took place on the night of November 29, 1959, as an episode of the NBC anthology series Sunday Showcase, which was normally devoted to plays, original TV dramas, and variety shows. Until 1971, awards ceremonies were held in both New York and Los Angeles, with winners accepting at one of the two. Pierre Cossette bought the rights to broadcast the ceremony from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and organized the first live telecast.^[1] CBS Broadcasting bought the rights in 1973 after moving the ceremony to Nashville, Tennessee; the American Music Awards were created for ABC as a result.

The 53rd Grammy Awards will take place on 13 February 2011 at the Staples Centerin Los Angeles. It will be broadcast on CBS.