Six In The Morning

Annan in Damascus to meet Assad

Mission to solve year-long crisis stumbles in the face of mistrust and more assaults on rebels in Syria's west.

Last Modified: 10 Mar 2012 08:19
A high-profile diplomatic mission to find a political resolution to the crisis in Syria has hit a roadblock before it officially begins, meeting with disapproval from the most prominent opposition bloc as violence in the country continues. Kofi Annan, the former UN chief, arrived in Damascus on Saturday to begin negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad, but the head of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) has said that his visit will amount to a waste of time without military pressure on Assad's government. Annan, enlisted as an envoy to Syria by the Arab League and UN, has said that "militarisation" of the conflict would only make it worse. Burhan Ghalioun, the SNC chief, has called for foreign military intervention.

China's new export to America: A baby boom
The Year of the Dragon is behind a spike in birth rates – and there's only one way to avoid the one-child policy and get better medical care. In Beijing, Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore reports on the rise of maternity tourism

Saturday 10 March 2012
Zhang Xuemei is just three-months pregnant but has already decided not to have her baby in her native China. Instead, the housewife and her husband, Wei Zhonghai, a wealthy mining boss, are paying tens of thousands of dollars to give birth to their third child in the United States. Ms Zhang and Mr Wei, both 40, are just one of a growing number of anxious Chinese couples willing to spend from 100,000 to 250,000 Chinese renminbi (£10,000 to £25,000) to give birth abroad, paying 20 times more than the average cost of delivering a child at home. They have turned to a Beijing-based agency that offers services for "birth tourists" keen to travel to the US.

Large turnout expected for first anti-Putin rally since vote
The Irish Times - Saturday, March 10, 2012

SÉAMUS MARTIN in Moscow
TENS OF thousands of demonstrators are due to gather on Moscow’s Novy Arbat, a long avenue of Soviet-era high-rise buildings in central Moscow, at 1pm local time (9am Irish time) today in the first rally to be held since Vladimir Putin’s election as president of Russia. For the organisers, the extra-parliamentary opposition, this is a key test of their mettle in the struggle to maintain the impetus of the anti-Putin protests which began after the disputed parliamentary elections in December.

Confessions of a Genius Art Forger
In one of Germany's greatest art scandals, former hippie and talented artist Wolfgang Beltracchi forged dozens of paintings over a period of 35 years, earning millions and fooling top collectors and museums. Now he's about to go to jail. In a SPIEGEL interview, he reveals how he did it and why he eventually got caught.

SPIEGEL Interview with Wolfgang Beltracchihttp://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,819934,00.html
At some point during the two-day interview, Wolfgang Beltracchi talked about a friend in Freiburg, a pathology professor. The two men know each other well. Beltracchi, sounding almost proud of himself, said: "He would like to examine my brain. He believes that he would find something completely different there." There are many people who would like to take a look inside Beltracchi's head. First there are the collectors, the gallery owners, appraisers and museum officials who fell for his forgeries. Then there are the investigators with the Berlin State Office of Criminal Investigation, who hunted him down but with whom Beltracchi refused to speak.

'Impoverished country with a very large bank account'
East Timor is a long way from realising its dreams of prosperity despite its oil revenue.

Michael Bachelard March 10, 2012
Timor Plaza's bleached interiors, glass-sided elevators and fluorescent lights mark it out as the cousin of every shopping mall in almost every city in the world. But this mall is in Dili, the capital of tiny, impoverished East Timor. It's the first built here and it's a multimillion-dollar statement of faith that this country's future will be more affluent than the present and more stable than the past.

Ugandans say anti-Kony campaign simplifies struggle
The wildly successful viral video campaign to raise global awareness of a brutal Central Africa rebel leader is attracting criticism from Ugandans

RODNEY MUHUMUZA NAIROBI, KENYA - Mar 10 2012 10:04
The campaign by the advocacy group Invisible Children to make militia leader Joseph Kony a household name has received enormous attention on YouTube and other Internet sites this week. But critics in Uganda said the video glosses over a complicated history that made it possible for Kony to rise to the notoriety he has today. They also lamented that the video does not inform viewers that Kony originally was waging war against Uganda's army, whose human rights record has been condemned as brutal by independent observers.