Six In The Morning

Western warplanes, missiles hit Libyan targets

REUTERS | Mar 20, 2011, 10.08am IST
TRIPOLI: Western forces hit targets along the Libyan coast on Saturday, using strikes from air and sea to force Muammar Gaddafi's troops to cease fire and end attacks on civilians.

Libyan state television said 48 people had been killed and 150 wounded in the allied air strikes. It also said there had been a fresh wave of strikes on Tripoli early on Sunday.

There was no way to independently verify the claims. French planes fired the first shots in what is the biggest international military intervention in the Arab world since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles in the region of the rebels' eastern stronghold, Benghazi.

The plight of the elderly: Japan's forgotten victims of the tsunami
Chiya Yamane, 84, survived the tsunami but is struggling in its aftermath. Andrew Buncombe reports on the plight of the nation's frailest citizens
Sunday, 20 March 2011
When the tsunami tore towards the home of Chiya Yamane, the 84-year-old woman was saved by strong arms and sturdy legs. But they were not her own. A fireman picked her up, put her on his back and raced up a hillside to the safety of higher ground. Without his intervention she is not sure she would have survived. "Arigatai," she says. "I feel blessed."

The plight of Mrs Yamane, a slight but lively woman now passing the days in an evacuation centre set up among the classrooms and corridors of a primary school in the coastal town of Miyako, is far from unique. Japan's elderly population has been confronted by extraordinary challenges by this disaster, not just from the earthquake and tsunami, but in the struggles that have followed.

Chechnya's hardman Ramzan Kadyrov hires football big guns to take the offensive against Russian giant
Ramzan Kadyrov hopes former international players and Ruud Gullit as coach can help improve his country's image
Miriam Elder in Moscow
The Observer, Sunday 20 March 2011
Russian football – and international sport – is about to be confronted with one of its most unlikely success stories. FC Terek Grozny, the newly energised team based in the troubled Caucasus republic of Chechnya, is hoping a slew of high-profile international acquisitions will help it make waves in the Russian premier league, which kicked off last weekend.

The ambitions of Ramzan Kadyrov, the republic's leader, however, do not stop there. He is optimistic that the club's footballing glory will help the world forget about his country's bloody past. Chief among the names crucial to Terek's success is Ruud Gullit, the Dutch football legend who signed on for an 18-month contract as coach earlier this year. "The team has started to play more offensively," said club spokesman Kazbek Khadzhiyev. "Gullit likes discipline on the pitch, and for every player to know what he has to do."

Bahrain and Yemen declare war on their protesters
With 42 killed in Sanaa, regimes show they will keep power at any cost
By Patrick Cockburn Sunday, 20 March 2011
Abrutal counter-revolution is sweeping through the Arabian Peninsula as Bahrain and Yemen both declare war on reform movements and ferociously try to suppress them with armed force.

In Yemen police and snipers on rooftops opened fire on Friday on a mass demonstration outside the main university, killing at least 42 people. The government has since declared martial law and set up checkpoints throughout the capital, Sanaa.

In Bahrain repression began a few days earlier, when King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa called for military support from other Gulf monarchs and 1,000 troops from Saudi Arabia crossed into the island kingdom.

Moonlighting now a way of life for Zim workers

FANUEL JONGWE HARARE, ZIMBABWE - Mar 20 2011 07:52
He's skilled at both, but neither is his real job.

"I work as a driver for a local company, but the salary is too little," he says. "I come here on my off-days to earn a little extra."

"Municipal workers simply mark out where the grave should be and leave the rest for the mourners, who then hire me to dig for them."

Chimbira charges $5 for a grave sign, and $5 to $10 to dig a grave, money that he says affords one decent meal a day for his wife and four children.

It's a common scenario in Zimbabwe, where unemployment is estimated at 85%, and the lucky few who have jobs often need to moonlight to survive.

Three Mile Island’s residents remain on alert three decades after nuclear crisis

By Carol Morello and Steven Mufson
MIDDLETOWN, PA. — Almost 32 years after America’s worst nuclear crisis at Three Mile Island, people who live in the shadow of the reactor’s cooling towers can instantly distinguish among sirens designating three different levels of alert.
Many residents stock potassium iodide pills, and the borough of Middletown maintains a “disaster room” lined with evacuation route maps that are updated to reflect every road repair. The local phone book publishes the routes. It also offers a primer on nuclear fission and a map with a 10-mile radius drawn around Three Mile Island, which still generates electricity for 800,000 households along with a certain amount of anxiety.

The crisis here on March 28, 1979, led to “changes throughout the world’s nuclear power industry,” as a state historical plaque on Route 441 notes.