Australia: Bush fires get closer to downtown Sydney
Thick smoke choked the skies over Australia's largest city early today as forest fires raged in and around Sydney, stretching a 20,000-member fire fighting force to its limit and threatening hundreds of homes.
"It is about as bad a picture as you could conjure up," said Phil Koperberg, New South Wales state fire chief.
Light white ash fell on office blocks today and the smell of smoke permeated air conditioning systems. The flames were the closest to the heart of Australia's largest city since the bush fires in New South Wales state began Christmas Eve, but authorities said the downtown area was not in danger.
The situation was set to worsen later in the day with forecasts of summer temperatures as high as 100 degrees and dry Outback wind gusts.
More than half the 100 "black Christmas" fires burning since Dec. 24 have been deliberately lit, police said.
Jerusalem: President, PM disagree on cease-fire speech
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday blocked Israel's president from making a yearlong cease-fire proposal to the Palestinian parliament in an unusual public disagreement about what gestures Israel should make as Mideast violence declines.
Sharon rejected the proposal for President Moshe Katsav to address Palestinian legislators in the West Bank town of Ramallah, calling it a public relations ploy by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a Sharon aide said on condition of anonymity. That brought a rare rebuke by Katsav, whose post is largely ceremonial.
Katsav, a member of Sharon's Likud party, rarely gets involved in the nitty-gritty of policymaking. The proposed address would have put him in the political spotlight and comes at a time when Israelis and Palestinians are both holding internal debates about what sort of moves to make to end 15 months of confrontation.
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