Zurich, Switzerland – As rail travel grows ever more popular in Switzerland, the country’s most important rail station is undergoing a bold transformation to keep up with increasing demand.

The Swiss are among the world’s top train travelers, second only to the Japanese. Last year, the average Swiss person traveled about 2,000 miles by rail; most of those journeys happened during the morning or evening rush hour.

Passenger flows have increased by 30% over the last seven years and 350,000 people now use Zurich’s central train station every day.

“You can say the Swiss are train addicts,” says Daniele Pallecchi, of Swiss Railways.

He adds: “Within the last seven years we had a big increase of passengers using the trains in Switzerland and here in Zurich as well and we need more capacity on the rails and on our trains. So we are building now the cross-city link.

“The cross-city link ensures bigger capacity and shorter time of traveling.”

When finished, Zurich’s cross-city railway line will be over six miles long and will form an integral part of the Swiss network’s inter-city axis. It is Switzerland’s biggest urban project.

At its heart is the new underground “through” station — or “Löwenstrasse” — built beneath the main station. Here, two new platforms will serve four tracks that will eventually be connected to the main train station.

Over the past four years men and machines have been digging under two rivers and a fully functioning rail hub, creating a hole the size of two football fields.

“It’s the most challenging job you can imagine,” says project director Roland Kobel.

“It’s not only railways … almost every section of engineering is realized here: we have tunneling, we have open cuts, we have deep borings.”

Kobel says between 500 and 700 people are working on the project at any time, building below ground while the old station continues to function above.

Swiss Railway reps say that while work on the cross-city link continues full bore, 98.5% of passengers still reach their destination on time.

It’s estimated that as many as half a million people will use the station each day by 2020. That’s why the cross-city link is crucial: once completed, in 2014, it will match that increase by doubling the capacity of the station.

Cuban President Raul Castro’s daughter joined Twitter to set the record straight about an interview she did abroad, but ended up arguing with one of the communist island’s prominent dissidents online.

Mariela Castro Espin wrote on her Twitter account, @CastroEspinM, that she recently made a trip to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and toured the city’s infamous red light district in her role as director for Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education.

An interview with Radio Netherlands characterized Castro Espin as “impressed” with the way the Dutch organize their prostitution. But on Twitter, Castro Espin said the conversation was taken out of context and that she would use social media to clarify her position.

“Without a doubt, there have been misunderstandings, manipulations, as always. At least there is the Web… and WikiLeaks,” she wrote on Twitter.

Shortly afterward, Castro Espin was “welcomed” to the social networking site by Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez, an outspoken critic of the Castro regime and avid Twitter user.

“Welcome to the plurality of Twitter,” Sanchez tweeted to Castro Espin. “Here no one can shut me up, or deny me permission to travel or block my entry.”

Castro Espin shot back: “Your focus on tolerance reproduces the old mechanisms of power. To improve your ‘services’ you need to study.”

While there is long-running animosity between dissidents and the government, it is not common for the two sides to exchange barbs in such a public forum.

A bevy of critical replies to Castro Espin must have followed, for then she wrote on Twitter: “Despicable parasites: Did you receive the order from your employers to respond in unison and with the same predetermined script? Be creative.”

In Cuba, where Internet access is limited or prohibitively expensive, many citizens use Twitter as a form of communicating, as Tweets can be posted from a simple text message.

Castro Espin is the niece of Fidel Castro. Her father, Raul Castro, assumed presidential duties from Fidel in 2006, and became president in 2008. Castro Espin’s organization promotes gay rights in Cuba.

That fight for equal rights in Cuba led Sanchez to ask another question of Castro Espin on Twitter: “How can you ask for acceptance just for one issue? Is tolerance universal or not?” Castro Espin did not answer.

Golfer Tiger Woods Tuesday addressed a racially-tinged remark made by his former caddy, telling reporters Steve Williams apologized and is not a racist.

“It was a wrong thing to say, something that we both acknowledge,” Woods said, speaking at the Lakes Golf Club in Sydney, site of this week’s Australian Open, according to his website.

Woods and Williams met earlier in the day, and shook hands after Williams apologized, the website reported.

Williams — who was fired by Woods in July — was being presented with a satirical award Friday night at an awards dinner in Shanghai, China, for comments he made after his new boss, golfer Adam Scott, defeated Woods at the Bridgestone Invitational in Ohio in August.
According to media reports, when asked about those comments during his acceptance speech Friday night, Williams said: “I wanted to shove it up that black a–.”

Shortly afterward, the New Zealander issued a contrite statement on his website.

“I apologize for comments I made last night at the Annual Caddy Awards dinner in Shanghai,” the statement said. “Players and caddies look forward to this evening all year and the spirit is always joking and fun.

“I now realize how my comments could be construed as racist,” Williams’ statement said. “However I assure you that was not my intent. I sincerely apologize to Tiger and anyone else I have offended.”

Woods said Tuesday that Williams “did apologize. It was hurtful, certainly, but life goes forward.”

But he said he does not believe Williams is a racist. “There’s no doubt about that,” Woods said, according to his website. “It was a comment that shouldn’t have been made and certainly one that he wished he didn’t make.”

Both the PGA Tour and the European Tour condemned Williams’ comment, but he will not face sanctions.

Scott said earlier he had discussed the matter with Williams and accepted his apology. “There is absolutely no room for racial discrimination in any walk of life, including the game of golf,” Scott said, according to the article on Woods’ website.

Williams said in July he was shocked and disappointed that Woods had severed their 12-year relationship, especially after he remained loyal to the golfer during the sex scandal in which he was embroiled for several months.

“Given the fact of my loyalty and the way that I stood by this guy through thick and thin …” Williams affiliate Mediaworks in New Zealand at the time. “And the timing of it is very poor, from my perspective.”

Williams said the sex scandal had caused him to lose respect for Woods.

“Well, I think when you’re great friends with somebody and a situation like this occurs, you obviously lose some kind of respect,” Williams said.

In announcing he would no longer be working with Williams, Woods said it was “time for a change.”

“Stevie is an outstanding caddy and a friend, and has been instrumental in many of my accomplishments,” Woods said in July. “I wish him great success in the future.”

Journalists covering last week’s economic summit overheard French President Nicolas Sarkozy blasting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “liar” during a talk with U.S. President Barack Obama, according to published reports.

The private conversation was inadvertently carried by open microphones before an Obama-Sarkozy news conference on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit in the French resort of Cannes. Its contents were first reported by the French website Arret Sur Images, which said reporters heard Sarkozy’s comments in French and Obama’s reply through a translator.

“I can’t stand him. He’s a liar,” Sarkozy said of Netanyahu, according to the website.

Obama replied, “You’re tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day,” the site reported.

Arret Sur Images (“Freeze Frame”) said journalists had listened in on the conversation but had agreed not to report it. The Reuters and Associated Press news services confirmed that report Tuesday.

“We didn’t record it, and to use it would force us to admit that we had cheated,” Arret Sur Images quoted one of the reporters who heard the conversation, whom it did not name. “Also, it would have caused great problems for the people responsible for the event’s organization.”

Dan Israel, the Arret Sur Images writer who broke the story, that about three minutes of the leaders’ private conversation could be heard.

“It was a mistake by the organization for the G-20 summit,” Israel said. He said journalists agreed among themselves to consider the remarks off the record because they didn’t want to get a summit staffer heard into a “rough patch” after he disclosed that the audio could be heard. But the word spread rapidly among journalists in Paris, prompting Arret Sur Images to start chasing the report, he said.

“Some of them did give me the quotes, and others just confirmed the quotes,” Israel said.

The report was met with silence from the Elysee Palace, the French president’s office, which did not respond to requests for comment.

In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said he had no comment on the conversation or Obama’s response but said, “The president’s position has been quite clear on the issue of efforts by the Palestinians to achieve through the U.N. what can only be achieved effectively through direct negotiations.”

Netanyahu’s office also had no comment. But in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League said it was “deeply disappointed and saddened” by the private conversation, warning that it could hurt ties between Israel and two key players in the Middle East peace process.

“President Obama’s response to Mr. Sarkozy implies that he agrees with the French leader,” ADL Director Abe Foxman said in a written statement. “In light of the revelations here, we hope that the Obama administration will do everything it can to reassure Israel that the relationship remains on a sure footing and to reinvigorate the trust between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which clearly is not what it should be.”

A member of Netanyahu’s coalition in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, said “there is not much love lost” between the Israeli leader and his counterparts.

“It’s unpleasant,” said Einat Wilf, whose Independence party is allied with Netanyahu’s ruling Likud. “Of course, we would all like to be loved and all love to have great relationships with each other, and I’m sure it would be nicer to know that our prime minister is loved. But at the end of the day, what did Machiavelli say? It’s more important to be feared than loved.”

Israeli opposition leaders have questioned Netanyahu’s honesty before, but Labor Party lawmaker Daniel Ben-Simon said he was “ashamed” that the leaders of two of Israel’s top allies “could characterize my prime minister as a liar.”

“If the most friendly leaders say that about my prime minister, what do others say about him who are not as friendly?” said Ben-Simon, the head of the Israeli-French Parliamentary Association.”If he lies to them, he must be lying to Israelis as well.”

London WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange lost a court battle to stay in the United Kingdom Wednesday and will be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over sex charges, a court ruled.

Appeals court judges Lord Justice John Thomas and Justice Duncan Ouseley rejected all four of the arguments Assange’s defense team used to fight the extradition.

They will hold another hearing later this month to determine whether he can appeal.

Assange, who has been under house arrest for nearly a year while waiting to find out the results, said Wednesday he will now consider his next steps.

“I have not been charged with any crime in any country,” he said on the steps of the High Court in London. “Despite this, the European arrest warrant is so restrictive that it prevents UK courts from considering the facts of a case, as judges have made clear here today.”

Assange is accused of sexually assaulting two women in Sweden in August 2010. Although he has not been charged with a crime, Swedish prosecutors want to question him in connection with the allegations.

The court comprehensively rejected his defense against being sent there to face prosecution, and was particularly scathing about a dispute with one of the women over whether she had consented to having sex with him.

Swedish authorities allege that the unnamed woman agreed to have sex with him only if he wore a condom, and that he then had unprotected sex with her while she was asleep.

“The allegation is that he had sexual intercourse with her when she was not in a position to consent and so he could not have had any reasonable belief that she did,” the court said.

Assange drew cheers from the crowd as he left the court. A “Free Assange” rally was planned for Wednesday outside the Royal Courts of Justice.

Assange, an Australian, decided to fight the case at the High Court after a judge at Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court ruled in February that the WikiLeaks head should be extradited.

Assange denies the accusations, saying they are an attempt to smear him, and he says it would be unfair to send him to a country where the language and legal system are alien to him. His attorneys have fought his extradition on procedural and human-rights grounds.

Assange’s lawyers have suggested that Sweden would hand him over to the United States if Britain extradites him. The prosecutor representing Sweden has dismissed that claim.

The extradition case is not linked to his work as founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, which has put him on the wrong side of the U.S. authorities.

His organization, which facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information, has published some 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables in the past year, causing embarrassment to the government and others.

It has also published hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents relating to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the organization has come under increasing financial pressure in recent months, leading Assange to announce last week that WikiLeaks was temporarily stopping publication to “aggressively fundraise” in order to stay afloat.

A financial blockade by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union has destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks’ revenue, Assange said.

Many financial institutions stopped doing business with the site after it released the U.S. diplomatic cables late last year, and donations have been stymied.

U.S. authorities have said disclosing the classified information was illegal and caused risks to individuals and national security.

Beijing residents blanketed by smog are pointing to U.S. readings on pollution levels — and slamming official reports from the Chinese government.

On Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, more and more people are uploading and reposting screen captures from air-quality-monitoring apps — generally one from the U.S. Embassy — highlighting “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” pollution levels, at times that China officially reported only “slight pollution” in the same areas.

China acknowledges the concerns and notes that it uses a different system to measure air pollution.

State-run news agency Global Times on Tuesday carried the headline, “Non-government air quality assessments on the rise due to distrust over official data.”

“Zeal for independent assessments of air quality has been on the rise nationwide in China recently, amid public distrust over official data resulting from the failure of national evaluations to include PM 2.5 level, an air pollution index used worldwide, in their calculations,” the article states.

The U.S. Embassy explains that PM 2.5 refers to fine particulates less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter.

The U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China, explains that these smaller particles “are believed to pose the largest health risks” and “are small enough to get into the lungs and even the blood stream.”

Chinese monitoring stations around Beijing track only larger, “coarse” particulates, between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameter.

On Monday, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau stated that the Air Pollution Index (API) was between 150 to 170, indicating “slight” pollution.

The U.S. monitor, meanwhile, which sends out tweets throughout the day, reported at times on Monday that the air in Beijing was “hazardous,” with Air Quality Index (AQI) readings over 300.

On October 9, the U.S. monitor reported a reading of over 500, which it labeled “beyond index.” The official government reading for that same date states there was “slight pollution.”

While many official reports on Chinese state-run media refer to the air as being filled with “fog,” the government acknowledges the haze is due to smog.

The state-run China Daily reported this week that while “fog alerts” are declared, “Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environment Affairs, said the hazes that have been smothering Beijing are really ‘smog.’”

While pollution is an ongoing concern in the country, the weather in recent days has made matters worse, said International weather anchor Mari Ramos.

“Beijing’s weather has been dominated by high pressure, which means sinking air and dry days. This weather pattern aggravates their air quality problem,” Ramos said.

“The air is stagnant, there is no mixing and all the pollutants are trapped near the surface.”

The Chinese capital has only had 1.5 mm of rain since October 14, she said.

“There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon, but not until the end of the week. By Friday, when a cold front comes through, there is a small chance of rain,” Ramos said, adding that even if it doesn’t rain, the end to the current weather pattern will bring a “welcome relief.”

In posts online, many Chinese people say they can smell sulfur dioxide in the air.

Some have posted photos of sites throughout Beijing, showing how little visibility there is.

The poor air quality has caused a surge in the numbers of patients with respiratory problems, and the Beijing Meteorological Bureau issued four yellow alerts for dense fog in the last two days, the Global Times article says. Doctors suggest people of all ages avoid outdoor activities.

Athens, Greece  — Greece’s cabinet voted Wednesday to support Prime Minister George Papandreou’s call to hold a referendum as soon as possible about the latest bailout plan, ministers coming out of the meeting told a affiliate.

The vote was unanimous, though some of the ministers expressed criticism prior to casting their votes,  affiliate Mega Channel reported.

The cabinet vote came hours before German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and senior figures from the International Monetary Fund and European Union were to meet Wednesday with Greek officials at an emergency meeting in Cannes, France, ahead of the G-20 summit.

Their meeting comes a day after U.S. and European stock markets tumbled after Papandreou’s call for the referendum on international aid for his country.

A “no” vote could theoretically force Greece to crash out of the euro and send shock waves through the global financial system.

Papandreou is seeking public backing from the Greek people for last week’s bailout deal, which took months to reach.

But the move created turmoil in domestic politics, with Papandreou forced to hold an emergency Cabinet meeting late Tuesday, and angered his European counterparts.

Sarkozy and Merkel issued a terse statement on Tuesday saying they were “determined to ensure the full implementation, without delay, of decisions adopted by the summit, which are necessary now more than ever.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney struck a similar note, saying Papandreou’s move reinforced the need for Europe “to elaborate further and implement rapidly the decisions they made last week.”

German and French markets closed down about 5% Tuesday, while London’s FTSE fell 2.4% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average index closed down nearly 300 points.

Greece’s former deputy finance minister, Petros Doukas, a member of the opposition New Democracy Party who is not currently in office,  he doubted the referendum would take place.

Papandreou is under enormous pressure from Europe, the markets and opposition forces within Greece to backtrack on the proposal, Doukas said.

He described Papandreou’s actions as a political gamble that had gone wrong, with the prime minister having tried to make the opposition parties share the pain of unpopular reforms. He suggested Papandreou would have to call elections or stand down as leader, as Greece was “not governable” with him as prime minister.

The announcement of the referendum rattled Papandreou’s hold on power, as a lawmaker defected from his party, leaving him with a majority of only two in Parliament.

Milena Apostolaki announced her resignation from the PASOK party, saying the call for a referendum was “a deeply divisive procedure.”

The deal reached last week would see the country’s sky-high debts cut in half, but it comes with strings attached, which have led to angry demonstrations in the streets of Greece.

Reflecting that anger, Greece’s opposition leader, Antonis Samaras, called Tuesday for a snap election, but it is unlikely he has the votes to force one.

Papandreou has called for a vote of confidence Friday, separate from his call for a referendum on the international bailout.

Elena Panaritis, a fellow PASOK lawmaker who advises Papandreou on economics, said she would support the confidence vote, saying the prime minister had been under heavy political pressure from inside and outside his party.

International lenders are demanding that Athens raise taxes, sell off state-owned companies and slash government spending, which would mean firing tens of thousands of state workers.

The Institute of International Finance, a global association representing many of the world’s biggest banks, reaffirmed its commitment Tuesday to the bailout agreement reached last week, saying it would work closely with all parties to implement it.

The European debt crisis claimed its first American victim shortly before Papandreou announced the referendum on Monday, as MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection, leaving top Wall Street creditors holding more than $2 billion in debt. The commodities and derivatives brokerage was run by ex-Sen. Jon Corzine, a former head of Goldman Sachs.

Constantine Michalos, chairman of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, said Papandreou’s referendum move had taken everyone by surprise.

As a consequence, he said, “Greece is facing a credibility gap as a result of the problems that have been created both on a political level and on a financial market level.”

Michalos also said he saw little point in Papandreou holding a confidence vote this week if the bailout deal, which was reached after top-level negotiations in Europe, could be overturned by the Greek people just a few weeks later.

One expert called the surprise plan for a referendum “a political gamble, which adds further uncertainty to the European debt crisis.”

“The prime minister will be hoping for a vote in favor to strengthen his mandate, but if the Greek population votes against, it will leave the IMF and Greece’s European partners in a very difficult situation,” said Gary Jenkins of Evolution Securities.

The planned referendum casts a shadow on the hard-fought deal that would allow Greece to write off as much as 50% of its debts to banks.

The agreement for private lenders to scrap half of Greece’s debt is worth 100 billion euros to Athens, and comes with a promise of 30 billion euros from the public sector to help pay off some of the remaining debts, making the whole deal worth 130 billion euros ($178 billion).

No date has been set on the vote, although local news reports say the referendum could come in January. A “no” vote threatens to unravel the deal, which was greeted last week with fanfare as a way to keep debt woes in Greece and other European nations from spilling across other borders, threatening the 17 nations united under the euro currency.

A weekend survey in Greece found nearly 60% opposed the debt deal reached last week in Brussels.

But other surveys have shown a more complicated picture.

A survey carried out last week by Kappa Research for the Greek daily newspaper To Vima showed a majority of Greeks wanted a referendum on the international rescue plan, and that more would oppose it than accept it.

But in the same survey, 70% of Greeks wanted to stay in the euro, according to RBS European Economics — a result that may not be possible if they vote “no” on the referendum.

“(It) clearly opens a can of worms because the referendum vote could go one of two ways,” said Frederic Neumann, a senior economist for HSBC.

“If approved, a vote of confidence in the government’s handling of the situation … if calmer heads prevail and it can rationally be explained to the public, I wouldn’t discount the measure being approved.”

But, until the referendum is passed, there is added uncertainty, he said, adding, “That’s just an added headache.”

Besides the Greek debt-reduction plan, last week’s European Union deal pledged to quadruple the EU’s bailout fund to about $1.38 trillion and to raise the capital required to help cushion the region’s banks from financial shocks.

Tripoli, Libya – Libya’s transitional government picked an engineering professor and longtime exile as its acting prime minister Monday, with the new leader pledging to respect human rights and international law.

The National Transitional Council elected Abdurrahim El-Keib, an electrical engineer who has held teaching posts at the University of Alabama and Abu Dhabi’s Petroleum Institute, to the post with the support of 26 of the 51 members who voted. El-Keib emerged victorious from a field that initially included 10 candidates.

“This is a new Libya,” El-Keib told reporters. “It’s been 42 years with our friends and people all around the world dealing with a brutal dictator, so concerns are in order, but I want to tell you there should be none of those.

“We expect the world to understand that we have national interests as well, and we expect them to respect this,” he said. “In fact, we demand respect of our national rights and national interests. In return, we promise respect and dealing according to international law.”
But in response to questions about allegations of human rights abuses by the revolutionary forces that toppled longtime strongman Moammar GGadhafi, El-Keib said Libyans needed time to sort things out.

“I also need to remind myself that the Libyan revolution ended just recently in Bani Walid, Sirte, and in Tripoli only about two months ago,” he said. “We beg you , the media, to give us the opportunity and the time to think through all the issues that have been raised by yourself as well as other Arab media. But we guarantee you that we are after building a nation that respects human rights and that does not permit abuse of human rights, but we need time.”

El-Keib, an NTC member representing Tripoli, has been a member of the Libyan opposition. He is to hold the prime minister’s job while Libya writes a constitution and prepares for a national election to vote in a new government, and said he plans to meet a deadline to form a new government within a month of the October 23 declaration of liberation that followed Gadhafi’s killing.

It was not immediately clear when he returned to Libya from the United States, where he had lived since 1975. According to his university bios, he earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Tripoli in 1973, a master’s at the University of Southern California in 1976 at a Ph.D. at North Carolina State in 1984.

He joined the Alabama faculty in 1985 as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 1996, teaching in the university’s electrical and computer engineering department and serving as director of the engineering school’s Energy Systems and Power Quality Center, according to a university directory.

He is currently listed as “former faculty” on the website of The Petroleum Institute, which said he served as chairman of its electrical engineering department and lists him as an expert in power system economics, planning and controls.

Tokyo — The decommissioning of four reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will likely take more than 30 years to complete, according to a report by Japanese officials.

The draft report, released by Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission of the Cabinet Office on Friday, said the removal of debris — or nuclear fuel — should begin by the end of 2021.

“We set a goal to start taking out the debris within a 10-year period, and it is estimated that it would take 30 years or more (after the cold shutdown) to finish decommissioning because the process at Fukushima would be complicated,” the report states.

Last month, the plant’s owner — Tokyo Electric Power Company — said engineers might be able to complete the cold shutdown of damaged reactors by the end of the year.
Temperatures in the three reactors where meltdowns occurred in the wake of the historic March 11 earthquake and tsunami have already been brought down below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), but the company has to maintain those conditions for some time before declaring the reactors in cold shutdown, Tokyo Electric spokesman Yoshikazu Nagai said.

Experts have said it will take years — perhaps decades — to fully clean up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Hydrogen explosions blew apart the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor housings, while another hydrogen blast is suspected to have damaged the No. 2 reactor. Fires believed caused by heat from the No. 4 spent fuel pool damaged that unit’s reactor building.

The atomic energy commission’s report noted it took 10 years to remove nuclear fuel after the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster in the United States. The commission predicted removing fuel at Fukushima would require more time because the situation is more severe.

Athens, Greece — European stock markets dropped dramatically Tuesday and the leaders of France and Germany scheduled an emergency conversation after Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou called a shock national referendum on international aid for his country.

A Greek rejection of the bail-out deal, which took months to hammer out, could lead the country to crash out of the euro and default on debts in an uncontrolled way, sending shock waves through the global financial system.

And the announcement of the referendum rattled Papandreou’s hold on power Tuesday, as a lawmaker defected from his party, leaving him with a majority of only two in Parliament.

Milena Apostolaki announced her resignation from the PASOK party, saying the call for a referendum was “a deeply divisive procedure.”

The European debt crisis claimed its first American victim shortly before Papandreou announced the referendum on Monday, as MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection, leaving top Wall Street creditors holding more than $2 billion in debt.

The commodities and derivatives broker was run by ex-Sen. Jon Corzine, a former head of Goldman Sachs.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will discuss Europe’s debt crisis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by phone Tuesday, his office announced.

Greece’s opposition leader Antonis Samaras called for snap elections Tuesday, but it is unlikely he has the votes to force one.

Papandreou has called for a vote of confidence later this week, separate from his call for a referendum on the international bail-out.

One expert called the surprise plan for a referendum “a political gamble which adds further uncertainty to the European debt crisis.”

“The prime minister will be hoping for a vote in favor to strengthen his mandate, but if the Greek population votes against, it will leave the IMF and Greece’s European partners in a very difficult situation,” said Gary Jenkins of Evolution Securities.

The planned referendum casts a shadow on a hard-fought deal that would allow Greece to write off much as 50% of its debts to banks.

No date has been set on the vote, although local press reports say the referendum could come in January. A “no” vote threatens to unravel the deal, which was greeted with fanfare last week as way to keep debt woes in Greece and other European nations from spilling across other borders, threatening the 17 nations united under the euro currency.

A weekend survey in Greece found nearly 60% opposed the debt deal reached in Brussels last week.

But other surveys have shown a more complicated picture.

A survey by Kappa Research for the newspaper To Vima last week showed a majority of Greeks wanted a referendum on the international rescue plan, and that more would oppose it than accept it.

But in the same survey, 70% of Greeks wanted to stay in the euro, according to RBS European Economics — a result that may not be possible if they vote no on the referendum.
“Clearly opens a can of worms because the referendum vote could go one of two ways,” said Frederic Neumann, a senior economist for HSBC.

“If approved, a vote of confidence in government’s handling of the situation … if calmer heads prevail and it can rationally be explained to the public, I wouldn’t discount the measure being approved.

“The problems for the markets, until the referendum is passed, there is added uncertainty. That’s just an added headache.”

Besides the Greek debt reduction plan, last week’s EU deal pledged to quadruple the EU’s bailout fund to about $1.38 trillion and raise the capital required to help cushion the region’s banks from financial shocks.

Pandandreou also asked for a vote of confidence this week in his beleaguered ruling Socialist party government.

“The new measures must be approved by parliament and the Greek people,” Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Greek television.

The referendum will ask for a “yes or no to the new aid package.

“The country is living a drama,” Venizelos said. “Citizens are confused … that is why the referendum is necessary.”