Six In The Morning

Fukushima 'punks' rage against evacuation



By Kyung Lah, CNN March 1, 2012
You wouldn't know the punk band was Japanese, a culture self-programmed for propriety. I can't write the chorus (sung in English) of the band's favorite song here, as my editor would first delete the offensive word and then report me to my superiors. Let's just say it's an obscenity that begins with the letter "F" and rhymes with what hockey players call the vulcanized rubber disk that's hit into the goal. The four-piece band screams the word over and over again to a Ramones tune, "Rockaway Beach," directed at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the crippled Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant.

Indonesia's tiger habitat pulped for paper, investigation shows
Greenpeace evidence reveals threatened trees have been chopped down and sent to factories to be pulped

Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent The Guardian, Thursday 1 March 2012
The habitat of the endangered Sumatran tiger is being rapidly destroyed in order to make tissues and paper packaging for consumer products in the west, new research from Greenpeace shows. A year-long investigation by the campaigning group has uncovered clear evidence, independently verified, that appears to show that ramin trees from the Indonesian rainforest have been chopped down and sent to factories to be pulped and turned into paper. The name ramin refers to a collection of endangered trees growing in peat swamps in Indonesia where the small number of remaining Sumatran tigers hunt.

Syria's rebels fear they face massacre as troops close in on Homs
Massacre feared after official says forces are on the attack in 'every basement and tunnel'

Beirut Thursday 01 March 2012
Opposition fighters and troops loyal to the regime in Syria were last night understood to be engaged in heavy fighting in the besieged city of Homs. The battle, news of which is impossible to verify since the electricity supply to the city has largely been cut, came after a Syrian government official said that district of Baba Amr, a rebel stronghold, would be "cleansed".

'I Knew Nothing about the Profundity of Her Thoughts'
They lay hidden away in an attic in Basel for decades before being discovered. But now many of the belongings of Anne Frank's family -- including thousands of letters and toys -- will be displayed at the Jewish Museum in the family's hometown of Frankfurt. In an interview, SPIEGEL ONLINE speaks with Buddy Elias, Anne's closest cousin and last surviving direct relative.

SPIEGEL ONLINE
The family of Anne Frank had lived in the western German city of Frankfurt since the 17th century, but the rise of Adolf Hitler forced them to go into exile. After the Nazis seized power in Germany, the Franks fled to Amsterdam, where Anne Frank would later write one of the most poignant and memorable memoirs of the Holocaust. The family of her cousin and childhood companion Bernhard "Buddy" Elias fled to Basel, Switzerland. For decades, the belongings of the Frank and Elias families were stored in Basel, including roughly 6,000 letters, documents and photographs, but also toys, clothes, pieces of furniture, books and paintings. Much of the belongings were kept in a dusty attic and were unknown to the house's occupants until they were discovered by accident in 2001.

Debris from tsunami to reach West Coast, join Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch will soon include debris from the Japanese tsunami, while one million to 2 million tons of lumber, construction material, refrigerators, TVs, fishing boats and other fragments from Japanese coastal towns make their way across the Pacific.

By AUDREY McAVOY, Associated Press
Refrigerators, TVs and other debris dragged into sea when a massive earthquake hit Japan last March, causing tsunamis as high as 130 feet (40 meters) to crash ashore, could show up in remote atolls north of Hawaii as soon as this winter, with other pieces reaching parts of the West Coast in 2013 and 2014, experts say. Debris from the tsunami initially formed a thick mass in the ocean of Japan's northeastern coast. But ocean currents have dispersed the pieces so they're now estimated to spread out some 3,000 miles halfway across the Pacific. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday the first bits of tsunami debris are estimated to make landfall this winter on small atolls northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands. Other pieces are expected to reach the coasts of Oregon, Washington state, Alaska and Canada between March 2013 and March 2014.

Jihadi democrats ready for their close-up
THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar
Such a pity that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't make the 2012 Oscars. La Clinton would stand a good chance of upstaging even tweet-exploding Angelina Jolie's right leg - that force of nature now all over the net, landing on the moon and even invading Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. [1] The Empress of Libya ("We came, we saw, he died") did try hard, including a photo op for the BBC, where she finally admitted that the US is fighting side by side with al-Qaeda to unleash regime change in Syria. [2]