Six In The Morning

In Yemen's political crisis, children pay the highest price


By Sudarsan Raghavan, Monday, January 9
ADEN, Yemen — Nazha Mohammed was pale and silent in her mother’s arms, on the edge of listlessness. At 2 months old, she was one of the youngest children inside a high school where several hundred Yemenis have sought refuge from conflict. “There’s no milk for her,” explained her father, Mohammed Yahya. Yemen’s populist uprising and the political crisis that followed have pushed the country to the brink of a humanitarian emergency, according to the United Nations and aid agencies. And children have been hit especially hard.

Pervez Musharraf announces return to Pakistan
Former military ruler faces arrest over charges relating to Benazir Bhutto assassination in 2008

Associated Press in Karachi guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 January 2012
Pervez Musharraf has announced he will return later this month to Pakistan where state prosecutors have said they will detain the former military ruler over Benazir Bhutto's assassination. Musharraf told several thousand supporters in Karachi by telephone on Sunday he would return between 27 and 30 January to prepare for elections. In apparent reference to the charges against him, he said: "I am coming to Pakistan but there are attempts to scare me off. There are baseless cases against me but we will face those cases in court."

The Gaza Music School: A composition in defiance and harmony
It was damaged by an Israeli bomb – but the Gaza Music School is quickly becoming a symbol of resilience

DONALD MACINTYRE MONDAY 09 JANUARY 2012
It is late afternoon and in a room darkening by the minute because of an all-too-familiar power cut, Shaden Shabwan, just 10 and a study in concentration, plays a Czech folk tune on an upright Yamaha piano as her teacher wills her to avoid mistakes. It is test day for piano students at the Gaza Music School, where Shaden is in her second year. Across the corridor, her classmate Abdel Aziz Sharek, also 10, is just as focused. Accompanied on ouds and tabla, he dexterously picks out a mesmerising classical longa on the qanun, the zither-like instrument that has been central to Arab music for a millennium or more. Abdel Aziz takes his regular studies as seriously as he evidently does the music. "I want to be a doctor," he explains. "But I will keep playing. I will be in a band at the same time."

Carbon emissions 'will defer Ice Age'
Human emissions of carbon dioxide will defer the next Ice Age, say scientists.

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News
The last Ice Age ended about 11,500 years ago, and when the next one should begin has not been entirely clear. Researchers used data on the Earth's orbit and other things to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one. In the journal Nature Geoscience, they write that the next Ice Age would begin within 1,500 years - but emissions have been so high that it will not.

Fuel subsidy removal: Abuja under heavy security


Written by Olawale Rasheed, Soji-Eze Fagbemi and Clement Idoko, Abuja Monday, 09 January 2012
AGAINST the directive of the Nigeria Police Command, FCT, that protesters would not be allowed in the city centres, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), on Sunday, directed Abuja residents to gather as early as 8.00 a.m. today at the Berger Junction for the take-off of the protest. The FCT Commissioner of Police, Mike Zuokumor, had stated while briefing journalists on Saturday that protesters should go to the car park of the National Stadium and not venture to move around the city centres.

Taiwan's Project Diving Dragon resurfaces
Greater China

By Jens Kastner
TAIPEI - Recurring reports that countries other than the United States are helping Taiwan build diesel-electric submarines domestically go back a decade. According to various articles, it's either the Western Europeans, Russians or Indians who are clandestinely concocting a submarine plan with the Taiwanese. While the notion that any country able to build subs would choose to so profoundly snub China appears unlikely, the question arises as to why these rumors persist.