PARIS
Kevin Hayes Rangers Jersey , Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were killed and seven wounded on Saturday when a train derailed in the department of les Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in southern France, local media reported.
The accident occurred on Saturday morning between Annot and Saint-Benoit when a tourist train connecting the touristic cities of Nice and Digne-les-Bains left the rails, leaving at least two people dead and seven wounded, French television BFMTV reported.
According to preliminary information, the train hit a rock on the track and one of the cars derailed, firefighters told the media.
by Marzia De Giuli
MILAN, Italy, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- "My son died at 29 after he did military service in Capo Teulada. He got cancer. Medical records showed there were thorium, steel, iron, strontium and all and some in his pancreas and liver," Giancarlo Piras, a desperate father from Sardinia island, told Xinhua.
Why is Sardinia the less populated but also the most allegedly polluted region of Italy? Capo Teulada, along with Salto di Quirra (PISQ) and Capo Frasca are the three military bases which along with other smaller ones comprise a total of 24,000 hectares in this paradise of the Mediterranean with beautiful beaches and diverse wildlife.
Sardinia only has roughly 1.6 million inhabitants, but is host to 60 percent of Italy's state-owned lands used by NATO, non-NATO forces and weapon makers for all kinds of live testing and exercises which are suspected by experts to have a dramatically adverse impact on the local population and environment.
ABNORMAL DEATHS AND DISEASES
"My husband used to work in our plot of land adjacent to the military base of Capo Teulada. In 1998 he was affected by cancer," Elisa Monni of the Amparu (Protect me) organization, whose goal is the protection of the health of Sardinians, said.
Monni recalled she used to play in the military lands when she was a small child.
"It was normal. In my life, I have always seen soldiers around me," she said.
"After my husband got ill, I started collecting the dramatic stories of many residents and I found out the truth," she told Xinhua.
With 13,000 hectares also used by local shepherds to graze their sheep, the PISQ is the biggest scientific military base in Europe. Analyses run by the national medical authority have shown a clear link between the military experiments and the high incidence, some 65 percent, of tumors among shepherds working within 2.7 km of the shooting range of the PISQ.
"In a built-up area near the PISQ inhabited by out of less than 150 people, leukemia has killed 21," said Mariella Cao, a middle school teacher of French and head of the Gettiamo le Basi (Throw the Bases) organization which wants the demilitarization of Sardinia, citing official analyses.
Veterinary investigations have also highlighted a connection between the military presence and the birth deformities registered in the livestock, some of which "distressing," Cao said.
Nevertheless, the local people sell cheese for a living and it is still possible to freely enter the PISQ.
"Authorities want to give an idea of openness and so they let the sheep graze on contaminated land," she added.
MILLIONAIRE BUSINESS OF MILITARY BASES
Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti pledged at a parliamentary briefing last month to start a dialogue with Sardinia "aimed, if possible, at reducing the weight of military presence in the region."
She restated, however, that the military exercises are "indispensable."
Meanwhile, Cao told Xinhua "The answers provided so far by the Italian governments have been deceptive since we started to denounce the situation early in 1999. Some officials have even openly denied the health risk of living close to the military bases."
NATO regulations require that they are cleaned after each test to eliminate contamination, but this is not done, she said.