June 3 Photo Brief: Siamese twin girls, Glenn Close at the White House, flooding in Europe
Siamese twin girls born in the West Bank city of Hebron, Glenn Close visits the White House for mental illness conference, flooding in Europe and more in today’s daily brief.
- Floodwater of the river Mulde encloses some houses north of Eilenburg, eastern Germany, on June 3, 2013. Parts of the eastern and southern Germany were flooded due to heavy and ongoing rainfalls. (Jens Wolf/AFP/Getty Images)
- Inhabitants wait for rescuers on the top of a overflooded shop in Passau, Bavaria, on June 3, 2013 as parts of the eastern and southern Germany were flooded due to heavy and ongoing rainfalls. (Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images)
- General view of Passau, flooded by the rising River Danube on June 3, 2013 in Passau, Lower Bavaria, Germany. Heavy rains across portions of Germany are causing flooding and ruining crops.(Johannes Simon/Getty Images)
- A child cools off in a water fountain plaza at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 2, 2013, where summer afternoon temperatures reached 75 degrees. (Federic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
- Egyptian activist Ahmed Douma stands behind bars during his trial at the New Cairo court, on the outskirts of Cairo June 3, 2013. A court sentenced Douma to six months in prison on Sunday, with the option of paying a bail of 5,000 Egyptian pounds ($716) to be released. Douma was accused of insulting President Mohamed Mursi and spreading false information with the purpose of disrupting public order.(Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)
- A general view of the newly-renovated Mario Filho “Maracana” stadium before a friendly football match between Brazil and England in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on June 2, 2013. (Andrey Heuler/AFP/Getty Images)
- Police tear gas to disperse protestors outside Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s working office in Besiktas Istanbul, on June 2, 2013, during a third day of clashes sparked by anger at his Islamist-rooted government. (Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images)
- A Nepalese farmer winnows wheat after harvesting at Bhaktapur, on the outskirts of Kathmandu on June 3, 2013. Over 80 percent of Nepal’s 27 million population depends upon agriculture and paddy is the major crop in the Himalayan nation. (Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images)
- A Pakistani folk artist breathes fire as he performs at the Margalla Festival 2013, which began at the Arts and Crafts Village in Islamabad on June 2, 2013. (Aamir Queshi/AFP/Getty Images)
- Members of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillary fire a 41 gun salute in Green Park in central London on June 3, 2013 in honor of the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
- Aerial view taken on June 3, 1998 shows rescue helpers working around the wreckage of the crashed ICE 884 highspeed train near Eschede close to Celle, central Germany. 101 people died in the worst train accident of the country as the Intercity-Express train crashed into a concrete bridge and derailed. (Ingo Wagner/AFP/Getty Images)
- Three-day-old Iman and Amani Palestinian Siamese twin girls from the Breiwesh family lie on a bed in the newborns unit at the Alia Hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron on June 03, 2013. Their mother received permission from the Israeli government to deliver at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, but the girls were born with one stomach and two hearts connected in one organ, according to Israeli doctors. The woman was warned by Palestinian doctors during prenatal checkups that she had Siamese twins but she refused to terminate her pregnancy because of her religious beliefs. (Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)
- A tourist poses before a portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen gate in Beijing on June 3, 2013. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are believed to have died when the government sent in tanks and soldiers to clear Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3-4, 1989, bringing a violent end to six weeks of pro-democracy protests. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
- A contestant dressed in an ethnic minority traditional costume, checks her make-up with a mirror before a rehearsal at the annual national chorus singing event in Beijing, June 3, 2013. The singing event is open to senior members under 75. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)
- Actress Glenn Close makes an appearance in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House June 3, 2013. Close is at the White House to speak at the National Conference on Mental Health which is being hosted by President Barack Obama today. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
- A man rests on the roof during media day at the Museum of Civilizations from Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM) in Marseille, June 3, 2013. The museum, based in the Fort Saint-Jean overlooking the southern French city will be inaugurated Tuesday as part of festivities to mark Marseille-Provence being named the 2013 European Capital of Culture. (Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters)
- Revellers play with tomato pulp during the annual “Tomatina” (tomato fight) in Sutamarchan province in Boyaca June 2, 2013. (John Vizcaino/Reuters)
- England’s captain Alastair Cook runs out to bat during the second one-day international cricket match against New Zealand at the Ageas Bowl cricket ground in Southampton, England June 2, 2013. (Philip Brown/Reuters)
- A man sits in a window of a colonial building in Yangon June 3, 2013. (Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)
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Czech capital on alert as floods swamp central Europe
Jason Hovet and Jana Mlcochova Reuters
12:58 p.m. EDT, June 3, 2013
PRAGUE (Reuters) – Volunteers piled up sandbags to keep a swollen river from overwhelming the Czech capital’s historic centre on Monday after floods across central Europe forced factories to closed, drove thousands from their homes and killed at least eight people.
Six people died in the Czech Republic from the worst flooding in a decade and a state of emergency was declared, while in Austria two people died and another two were missing.
The flooding, which also affected parts of Germany, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, sent shares in reinsurers Munich Re and Hannover Re down by about 2.5 percent, with markets anticipating big claims from property owners once the waters recede.
The flooding arose from several days of torrential rainfall. In some places two months worth of rain fell in just a few days.
Carmaker Volkswagen temporarily shut its plant in Zwickau, in the eastern German state of Saxony, because the flooding stopped workers reaching the factory.
In the centre of the west German town of Passau, people took off their shoes and rolled up their trousers to walk through the ankle-deep water.
The last time central Europe saw similar floods was in 2002, when 17 people were killed in the Czech Republic, and damage estimated at 20 billion euros ($26 billion) was inflicted.
Officials in Prague, the Czech capital listed by the U.N. cultural agency as a World Heritage Site, said they did not anticipate the waters of the Vltava river would reach 2002 levels.
But they were taking no chances. They shut the metro system and, in streets near the river, soldiers put up metal fences – the sort of flood defenses ordered after the disaster 11 years ago. Elsewhere, volunteers built walls of sandbags.
Tigers at Prague zoo were tranquilized and moved out of an enclosure at risk from flooding.
Czech officials said the flood defenses in Prague should hold, but that the river level was likely to rise again on Tuesday morning. “The story is not yet over here,” said Czech Environment Minister Tomas Chalupa.
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The Charles Bridge, a favorite spot for tourists that dates to the 14th century, was closed. Tree trunks floated by in the muddy brown water. A riverside path that is below street level, is usually populated with cyclists and people sitting at cafes, was under water on Monday.
“We left England yesterday and it was sunny and warm. We didn’t expect this, we don’t even have our raincoats,” said British tourist Alison Tadman, who came to Prague with her husband, Adrian, to celebrate her 47th birthday.
She and her husband were sheltering in a McDonald’s restaurant. “We’re pretty disappointed,” she said.
Some of the worst flooding was around the Danube river, which starts in Germany and winds its way through countries including Austria, Slovakia and Hungary on its way to the Black Sea. The river was swollen by heavy rain at the weekend.
In Germany, the interior minister flew to flood-hit regions on Monday and Chancellor Angela Merkel was preparing to go on Tuesday, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
How her government responds to the emergency could have some bearing on the outcome of a nationwide election in September.
Shipping was stopped on parts of the Danube and Rhine rivers in Germany, and along the entire Austrian stretch of the Danube, because of the high waters. The rivers are important arteries for moving grains, coals and other commodities.
Thousands of people living in low-lying areas in Austria and the Czech Republic had to be evacuated from their homes. In the Austrian town of Schaerding, a duck swam across a road intersection, past the gates of a flooded cemetery.
The flooding killed five people in the Czech Republic over the weekend and on Monday the death toll went up to six – a worker electrocuted while trying to switch off a flooded electricity transformer 50 km (30 miles) east of Prague, the Czech news agency CTK reported.
In the Austrian city of Salzburg, 160 passengers were put up overnight in army barracks after the floods stranded their train. Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger told reporters the situation in some areas was “very fraught.”
The risk on Monday was that the flood danger could follow the course of the Danube river downstream to other European countries along its route.
Workers erected flood barriers along the banks of the Danube where it passes through the Slovak capital, Bratislava, and police shut several roads.
“We are getting bad news from Germany and Austria. We have to do all we can to protect … the capital,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said.
In Hungary, whose capital Budapest also sits on the banks of the Danube, state media quoted Gyorgy Bakondi, head of the National Disaster Authority, as saying that 400 people were working on flood defenses.
He said water levels in the river could reach or even exceed the height seen in the record flooding in 2002.
Some climate scientists cited a possible link between extreme weather such as flooding and climate change. The warmer the air, the more moisture it holds. A study last year by a United Nations panel of scientists said heavy rainfalls will become more common in this century.
($1 = 0.7716 euros)
(Reporting by Robert Muller, Jan Lopatka and Michael Kahn in Prague, Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin, Jonathan Gould in Frankfurt, Chris Vellacott in London, Alister Doyle in Oslo and Gergely Szakacs in Budapest; Writing by Christian Lowe in Warsaw; Editing by Mark Heinrich)