Six In The Morning

Poor nutrition stunts growth of nearly half of under-fives in Bangladesh

The government has pledged to address child malnutrition and child mortality among poor families in Bangladesh, but the rising price of food is exacerbating the situation

 

• Mark Tran in Dhaka
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 February 2012 06.17 GMT

Rupa, a four-month-old girl, has not had the best start in life; she lives in a small one-room home made of brick and corrugated-iron sheets with her sickly mother and father in Modhubag, a slum in the centre of Dhaka.At her age, Rupa should weigh 3kg, but weighs only two. Ideally, she should be breast fed for her first six months, but her mother, Antora, a slight 20-year-old, could only provide milk for the first 15 days.

 

Working as a jail torturer ruined my life 

Patrick Cockburn on the former soldier who has joined the political prisoners he tortured in Turkey's Mamak prison by suing the generals who led a regime of terror

Wednesday 15 February 2012

  A former Turkish soldier, Dogan Eslik, is suing the generals who seized power in Turkey in a military coup in 1980 and tortured hundreds of thousands of people. He claims his experiences in Ankara's dreaded Mamak Prison dehumanised him, turned him into a monster, and have effectively ruined his life. He joins thousands of other complainants filing charges against those they hold responsible for torture and murder.
What makes Mr Eslik's legal action different from the others is that they are suing because they suffered torture while he is one of those who inflicted it.

 

02/15/2012

 

Hot Air

The EU's Emissions Trading System Isn't Working

By Alexander Jung

 Emissions trading, the European Union hoped, would limit the release of harmful greenhouse gases. But it isn't working. The price for emissions certificates has plunged, a development that is actually making coal more attractive than renewable energy.

In the perfect world of economic liberals, every commodity has its price. Limited supply makes goods more expensive and vice versa. That's how markets work -- at least in theory.

In practice, things often look different, and this is especially true when it comes to emissions trading, a business subject to a very different mechanism: laws dictated by the European Union. Economists have generally praised the trading scheme as a nearly ideal instrument for reducing harmful carbon dioxide emissions. In this system, businesses purchase pollution permits, with prices determined according to supply and demand, in an efficient and self-regulating process. Companies that invest in environmentally friendly technology need to buy fewer certificates, or may even have some left over to sell.

New nuclear step for Iran

Ruth Pollard, Beirut

February 16, 2012
IN A further escalation of international tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to announce a new advance to its nuclear fuel program overnight.
The move comes just weeks after the US and the European Union widened economic sanctions against Tehran in a renewed attempt to cripple Iran's economy and slow its development of nuclear weapons.

Kenyan army claims al-Shabaab rebels are crippled

OTTO BAKANO NAIROBI, KENYA  The Kenyan army says it has crippled Somalia's al-Shabaab rebels four months after launching an offensive to defeat them but its superior firepower alone is unlikely to win the battle, analysts said.
 Military officials claim air strikes and ground assaults have scuttled the al-Qaeda-linked militants and disrupted their revenue sources since the incursion -- Kenya's first since independence in 1963 -- began in October.

"Al-Shabaab is considerably weakened," said Kenyan army spokesperson Colonel Cyrus Oguna. "In our own assessment, 75% of revenue collection of al-Shabaab has been disrupted."

But the troops have gained little ground in the 17 weeks since they announced on October 16 that their tanks had rolled across the border two days earlier.

  15 February 2012 Last updated at 13:14 GMT

Honduras prison fire 'leaves at least 272 dead'

 A massive fire has swept through a jail in Honduras, killing at least 272 prisoners, officials say.

Many of the victims were burned or suffocated to death in their cells at the jail in Comayagua, in central Honduras.
Families flocked to the site, desperate for news. Some prisoners escaped the blaze by breaking through the roof to jump from the building, they said.
Officials are investigating whether an electrical fault caused the blaze.