Sirleaf victory in Liberia marred by boycott and violence
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wins election by landslide thanks to opposition boycott, but insists polls were legitimate
Africa's first and only female president Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleafwas re-elected on Thursday with 90.2% of the vote, but her government may struggle to prove its legitimacy because the opposition boycotted the poll.
Hours before the results were announced in an election that was supposed to solidify Liberia's shaky peace, opposition leader Winston Tubman said he would not accept the outcome of this week's presidential runoff.
With nearly nine-tenths of precincts reporting, National Election Commission chair Elizabeth Nelson said that Sirleaf had received 513,320 votes out of 565,391 tallied.
Now you Dead Sea it...
Israel would like the salt lake to be declared a wonder of nature. But years of neglect and exploitation mean it is shrinking before our eyes, Donald Macintyre reports from Ein Gedi
Here at the lowest place on earth, in 75 degree sunshine, Olga Alexarkin is sitting on a deckchair in bathing suit and gazing eastwards across the radiantly blue, imponderably deep, Dead Sea towards the Jordanian cliffs 11 miles away.
In a moment she will plunge into the little waves thrown up by the desert breeze, and bob effortlessly on her back supported by the planet's most buoyant water, so saturated with salt that it will sting scratches she never knew she had.
But first, she talks about why she has come here once a month since emigrating to Israel in 1998; for the view, little changed since pre-historic times, for the air, with its abnormally low pollen and high oxygen count; for the unique health giving minerals of the sea itself, and for the steep walks through the acacia trees and herds of agile ibex along the nearby David spring. This is simply, she sighs, "the best place in the world".
Miyuki, daughter of disaster, survives another horror
November 11, 2011
A Japanese aid worker who survived her country's devastating tsunami was rescued from the wreckage of a Turkish hotel after a second powerful earthquake hit the eastern province of Van.
Miyuki Konnai, 32, was one of a number of aid workers in Turkey helping with the aftermath of an earthquake that hit Van last month, killing 600 people, only to become trapped under the wreckage of the Bayram Hotel.
Army raises ‘secession' spectre to counter plan to lift AFSPA
PRAVEEN SWAMI
But this assessment was disputed by representatives of other security forces
The Army's top commander in Jammu and Kashmir has said the country could be compelled to grant the State independence by 2016 if government plans to lift the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act from some areas go ahead, highly-placed security sources have toldThe Hindu.
The assertion was made on Wednesday in an over hour-long presentation to the Unified Headquarters, the State's top coordination body for security, by Lieutenant-General Syed Ata Hasnain, who commands the Srinagar-based XV Corps.
South Korea shuts down for the all-or-nothing Korean SAT
Some 80 percent of Korea's high school students go on to further education. And to ensure students have the best chance, one day every year Korea changes its plane schedules, redirects traffic, and holds its breath.
So much rests on today's annual college entrance exam in South Korea that planes were grounded, roads were closed, and places of worship were thronged with parents praying for divine intervention as students plowed through its five separate sections for nine hours.
For the nearly 700,000 high schoolers on their way out of school taking the test this morning, this will determine what university they will go to (if any), their salary, and their future fate.
Such is the all-or-nothing emphasis pinned on gaining entry to one of a handful of the top higher education institutions in the country – anchored in the so-called SKY (Seoul National, Korea and Yonsei universities) trinity – that the entire Korean education system is geared toward success on this single day of the year.
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times
Fatat Malouk said she has no doubt: The burned, mutilated and seemingly unrecognizable body parts that she viewed in a Syrian military hospital in September were the remains of her child — the victim, she said, of government thugs who snatched the teenager off the street.
"My heart tells me this was my daughter," Malouk said.
Her daughter, Zaynab Hosni, 18, was posthumously immortalized as "the flower of Syria," and her gruesome fate, captured on amateur video, became a graphic rallying cry for the Syrian opposition.
Fate of 'flower of Syria' offers cautionary tale
Relatives are convinced they buried Zaynab Hosni — who has become a rallying symbol for the Syrian opposition — in September. But she turned up last month on Syrian TV, sparking conspiracy theories.
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times
Fatat Malouk said she has no doubt: The burned, mutilated and seemingly unrecognizable body parts that she viewed in a Syrian military hospital in September were the remains of her child — the victim, she said, of government thugs who snatched the teenager off the street.
"My heart tells me this was my daughter," Malouk said.
Her daughter, Zaynab Hosni, 18, was posthumously immortalized as "the flower of Syria," and her gruesome fate, captured on amateur video, became a graphic rallying cry for the Syrian opposition.
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