Sports manufacturing in Bangladesh: behind the scenes-video

With the Olympic Games approaching, the spotlight has fallen on working conditions at the companies making sports kit for some of the world's most recognisable athletes. This footage shows a hand-operated production line, from sole to packaged product • Are export processing zones the new sweatshops, or drivers of development?

Who helped Bin Laden in Pakistan?

Did rogue spies or 'Pakistani Blackwater' shield Osama bin Laden?

 

Kamran Bokhari, vice-president for Middle Eastern and South Asian Affairs at Stratfor, a global intelligence company, believes the idea that bin Laden moved around without a network of individuals organizing his transportation and logistics is simply not possible.

"If you're a six-foot-five Arab, and the most wanted man on the planet, you can't just walk into a place like Pakistan without support," Bokhari said. "So what's the nature of that support?"

 U.S. officials publicly state they have no evidence that any Pakistani institutional leaders had any knowledge of bin Laden's presence here, nor played any role in helping to move him. 

 "There are deep suspicions on both sides," says retired General Mahmud Ali Durrani, a former Pakistan army chief and ambassador to the United States. "I think the biggest concern in the U.S., if I put it in a phrase, is that Pakistan is hunting with the hounds and running with the hares. That is the perception."

 

The nature of Pakistan's retired uniformed corps, many of whom stay involved with the work of the agencies long after they leave as the new leadership continues to make use of their experience and contacts, albeit in unofficial capacities and with limited authority. As the largest employer in Pakistan, it follows that the Pakistan army also has the largest pool of retirees, some of whom spent significant time working closely with and gaining the trust of jihadi groups in the 1980s and 1990s.

"If it's a retired network of people, what I call the 'Pakistani Blackwater,' that's not that bad. It's bad, but not that bad," Bokhari said. "But if it's someone who's serving, or more than one person, then [Pakistan's leaders] have a leak in [their] system and that's terrifying. Anyone who's a very nationalistic, Pakistani leader who doesn't want al-Qaida or the CIA to be able to get into their house will want to get to the bottom of that."

Six In The Morning

In vast jungle, US troops aid in search for Kony

　Elite Special Operations troops join in the hunt for the fugitive rebel leader

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
OBO, Central African Republic — It has got to be one of the oddest matchups in United States military history. One hundred of America’s elite Special Operations troops, aided by night vision scopes and satellite imagery, are helping African forces find a wig-wearing, gibberish-speaking fugitive rebel commander named Joseph Kony who has been hiding out in the jungle for years with a band of child soldiers and a harem of dozens of child brides. No one knows exactly where Mr. Kony is, but here in Obo, at a remote forward operating post in the Central African Republic, Green Berets pore over maps and interview villagers, hopeful for a clue.

Social unrest on the rise in Europe, says ILO report
Welfare cuts and unemployment fuelling protests and anxiety across the continent

Phillip Inman, economics correspondent The Guardian, Monday 30 April 2012
Social unrest is expected to grow in Europe as governments impose steep welfare cuts and fail to implement policies to reduce unemployment, according to a report by the International Labour Organisation. As German engineers embarked on a wave of strikes in pursuit of a 6.5% pay increase and Spanish workers took to the streets of 50 towns to protest at welfare cuts and a jump in unemployment, the ILO said the situation in the 27 EU countries was becoming more unstable.

Taliban link to brutal murder of aid worker


Andrew Buncombe Author Biography , Monday 30 April 2012
The mutilated body of a British aid worker who was kidnapped earlier this year in Pakistan has been found in the south-western city of Quetta. A note reportedly pinned to the corpse by the Pakistani Taliban said he was killed because no ransom had been paid. A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed that police had recovered the body of Khalil Rasjed Dale, 60, who was managing a healthcare programme in the city. Mr Dale, who received an MBE for his humanitarian service, had previously worked in Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.

Sudan: South softens, as Khartoum declares emergency


YARA BAYOUMY
South Sudan has told the United Nations it will pull all police out of a disputed region bordering Sudan and is committed to halting all fighting with its northern neighbour, but Khartoum declared a state of emergency in some border areas. The conflicting developments on Sunday raised questions whether United Nations appeals for an end to more than three weeks of border clashes between Sudan and South Sudan would bear fruit and avert full-blown war in an oil-producing region.

Early Israeli elections? What it would mean for US, Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled on Sunday for the first time that he is liable to move up Israel’s elections from next year to this year.

By Joshua Mitnick, Correspondent
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled on Sunday for the first time that he is liable to move up Israel’s elections from next year to this year to take advantage of his lead in opinion polls over the country’s fractured opposition. Though Mr. Netanyahu’s record of sounding the alarm about a nuclear Iran is likely to figure prominently in his campaign because it plays to his strength as a security hawk, early elections would make it less likely that the prime minister would order a preemptive attack on Iran because it risks igniting regional war that could endanger his popularity, analysts said.

India reforms under threat from powerful regions
Is India's economic growth being undermined by politics?

By Sanjoy Majumder BBC News, Delhi
A number of key economic and social reforms are being opposed by powerful regional politicians who are growing in stature and influence. Their stand often comes at the cost of the Congress-led federal government, which lacks a majority in parliament and depends on local heavyweights for support. Mamata Banerjee - one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people this year - is one such regional player. It has been almost a year since she won West Bengal's landmark elections, defeating the incumbent communists after 30 years.

When the cameras turned on the Murdochs

It was a week that saw the most powerful media mogul put under the spotlight. Rupert Murdoch and his son James went under oath at the Leveson inquiry - set up to look into media standards after the phone hacking scandal at the Murdoch-owned tabloid, News of the World. The media tycoon was put under scrutiny like never before and the story has exposed the links between Murdoch and Britain's political establishment. With a legal case set for the US, this story looks set to reverberate transatlantically. In this week's News Divide, we look at the mega-media story ripping through Britain's media and political elite.

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Remarks by Former Official Fuel Israeli Discord on Iran

　

By JODI RUDOREN
The recently retired chief of Israel’s internal security agency accused the government of “misleading the public” about the likely effectiveness of an aerial strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, ratcheting up the criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak from the country’s security establishment. Yuval Diskin, who retired last year as the director of Shin Bet, the Israeli equivalent of the F.B.I., said at a public forum on Friday night that he had “no faith” in the ability of the current leadership to handle the Iranian nuclear threat. “I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings,” he told a gathering in Kfar Saba, a central Israeli city of 80,000. “I have observed them from up close,” he added, broadening his critique to include the handling of the Palestinian conflict as well. “I fear very much that these are not the people I’d want at the wheel.”

Sarkozy pursues Le Pen supporters as Socialists woo poor and disillusioned
While the French president tries to close the gap on his rival, François Hollande is redoubling his efforts to get the residents of France's inner-city tower blocks into the voting booths

Kim Willsher in La Verrière The Observer, Sunday 29 April 2012
In the high-rise housing estate at La Verrière, a dozen young and not-so-young men are kicking their heels and looking bored outside a takeaway. "This place has a bad reputation," says Benoît Hamon, spokesman for the Socialist party. "It's had problems with delinquency and drugs, but its reputation isn't justified. The people are lovely and very welcoming. You'll see." Hamon should know. For four months he and his campaign team have been knocking on doors across La Verrière, drumming up support for Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande.

Slaughter of rhinos at record high
Poaching could lead to extinction by 2025

David Randall , Sunday 29 April 2012
Rhinos are being killed in such unprecedented numbers that there are realistic fears they could be wiped from the face of the planet within a generation. If this happens, it will be the first major extinction of an animal in the wild since the worldwide conservation movement began. The bare statistics are horrifying. In South Africa, more rhinos are being slaughtered for their horns in a single week than were killed in a whole year a decade ago. And the death toll is fast accelerating. In 2007, a mere 13 were killed. In 2008, it was 83, and, a year later, 122. Last year it was 448, and this year, by 19 April, it was 181.

China's Shawshank Redemption


Andrew Higgins April 29, 2012
FOR weeks, Chen Guangcheng pretended to be sick. Living under the watchful eye of the world's biggest security apparatus, his every movement closely monitored, the self-trained lawyer was hoping his jailers would drop their guard. On Sunday, they did. Under a moonless sky, Mr Chen scaled a high wall and fled the darkened village where he had been confined to his home for the past year-and-a-half, according to a version of events provided by friends. From there, he travelled nearly 640 kilometres to Beijing and, perhaps, to freedom.

Sudan arrests foreigners in disputed border region


ULF LAESSING AND YARA BAYOUMY KHARTOUM, SUDAN - Apr 29 2012 07:32
Sudan said it had arrested a Briton, a Norwegian and a South African on Saturday, accusing them of illegally entering a disputed oil-producing border area to spy for its enemy South Sudan. South Sudanese officials denied the allegations and said the men were working with the United Nations and aid groups clearing mines and had got lost in the remote territory close to the boundary between the two countries.

LA riots: How 1992 changed the police
The Los Angeles riots erupted on 29 April 1992 after four white police officers were acquitted over the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King.

By Regan Morris BBC News, Los Angeles
Anger led to days of looting and burning, 54 deaths and $1bn (£610m) of damage to the city. A state of emergency was declared in South Central Los Angeles. In the wake of the riots the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was forced to change. The grainy black and white footage of King's beating offered proof of what the black community had been complaining about for decades - police brutality.

Aerial images of Syria

Satellite images: Homs The imagery, commissioned by Al Jazeera, provides snapshots of the Syrian city's dire situation. Government forces' continued shelling of the Syrian city has left some neighbourhoods unrecognisable. Satellite images taken this March reveal a deserted city centre, destroyed areas and heavy deployment of tanks across the city. This stands in contrast to images shot in August, which showed a busy city of around one million. The latest imagery provides a snapshot of what appears to be an increasingly dire situation, as Steve Chao reports. Satellite images: Idlib The city of Idlib has been a key hub of opposition activity throughout the uprising in Syria. In March, just before a ceasefire was agreed to, the government launched a massive offensive. Al Jazeera has obtained satellite images that show how the army choked off the city. Steve Chao reports on the government's strategy to isolate the people of Idlib.

Six In The Morning

Talks with Pakistan break down when US refuses to apologize for airstrike

　

By Declan Walsch, Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers
The latest high-level talks on ending a diplomatic deadlock between the United States and Pakistan ended in failure on Friday over Pakistani demands for an unconditional apology from the Obama administration for an airstrike. The White House, angered by the recent spectacular Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, refuses to apologize. The Obama administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, left the Pakistani capital Friday night with no agreement after two days of discussions aimed at patching up the damage caused by the American airstrikes last November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the Afghanistan border.

Thousands march for election reforms in Malaysia
Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the centre of Kuala Lumpur calling for fair elections and greater accountability

Reuters in Kuala Lumpur guardian.co.uk, Saturday 28 April 2012 06.40 BST
Up to 20,000 protesters calling for fair elections and greater accountability marched on Kuala Lumpur's centre on Saturday in a show of force that will test the Malaysian government's reformist pledges and may affect the timing of national polls. Police shut down much of the city centre and closed off the historic Merdeka (Independence) Square with barriers and barbed wire, enforcing a court order that the protesters should not enter the symbolically important site.

Camorra code is cracked: Letter reveals how jailed boss still ran the mafia
Note about holidays and home-made jam was not so innocent

Milan Saturday 28 April 2012
Investigators have intercepted a hand-written letter sent to a jailed mobster that has shed new light on the secret language that allows mafia bosses to stay in contact with clan members from behind bars. The mafioso in question, Michele Zagaria, the head of the Camorra's brutal Casalesi clan, was dragged from an underground bunker near Naples and jailed last December, after 11 years on the run. At the time, Raffaele Cantone, a former Naples magistrate who has lived under armed protection since 2003 after Zagaria ordered his assassination, hailed the capture.

Under-age call girl scandal shakes Singapore elite


April 28, 2012 - 3:05PM
An unfolding scandal over an under-age call girl has shaken Singapore's political and economic elite after businessmen, civil servants and uniformed officers were charged in the case. Prostitution is legal in Singapore, but 48 men ranging in age from their early 20s to late 40s have so far been charged under a 2008 law making it a crime to pay for sex with a girl under 18. Singapore has long been perceived as a conservative, even prudish, city-state but it has a thriving sex industry dating back to its beginnings as a key trading port of the then British empire

A history of the world, BRIC by BRIC
THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar
Goldman Sachs - via economist Jim O'Neill - invented the concept of a rising new bloc on the planet: BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Some cynics couldn't help calling it the "Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept." Not really. Goldman now expects the BRICS countries to account for almost 40% of global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050, and to include four of the world's top five economies. Soon, in fact, that acronym may have to expand to include Turkey, Indonesia, South Korea and, yes, nuclear Iran: BRIIICTSS? Despite its well-known problems as a nation under economic siege, Iran is also motoring along as part of the N-11, yet another distilled concept. (It stands for the next 11 emerging economies.)

Mexico weighs law to compensate victims of drug violence
Mexico's Senate approved a law that would provide compensation of up to $70,000 to victims of organized crime, writes a guest blogger. It still needs approval from the House of Representatives.

By Hannah Stone, Guest blogger
Mexico's Senate has approved a bill to compensate victims of organized crime, one of the major demands of the peace movement led by poet Javier Sicilia. The law would oblige the state to help and protect victims of violence and human rights abuses connected to organized crime, reports El Universal. Under the law, the state will provide compensation of up to 934,000 pesos ($70,000) to victims. The legislation would create a National System for Attention to Victims, which will provide support to those hurt by crime and oversee compensation payments. The body would include representatives of victims' groups and of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Unintended consequences: India;s rape crisis

India’s burgeoning economy has a dark side: Cities across the country are struggling with rising cases of rape and sexual harassment.


While growing numbers of women have joined the workforce, many are also being attacked by men used to a traditional patriarchal environment, breeding resentment and violence.
In New Delhi, commonly described as the "rape capital" of the country, women and men alike are fighting back in creative ways. A new emergency task force, a special women’s taxi service and even an anti-rape smartphone app have been created to tackle the rape crisis.

In China Disagreement Means Jail

One of China's best known dissidents, Chen Guangcheng, has escaped from house arrest and has released a video addressed to Premier Wen Jiabao.

In it he makes three demands, including one that Mr Wen investigate what Mr Chen, who is blind, calls the brutal beating up of his family members.
Rights activists say Mr Chen slipped out of his home in Dongshigu town in Shandong province on Sunday.
His whereabouts are unclear, but supporters say he is safe in Beijing.
Unconfirmed reports say Mr Chen may have taken refuge in a diplomatic mission.
Mr Chen, 40, had been under house arrest since he was released from a four-year jail sentence in 2010.

Six In The Morning

Bo Xilai officials 'wiretapped call to President Hu Jintao'

 New claims may shed light on why Bo – previously accused of unspecified disciplinary violations – was ejected from post

 

• Tania Branigan in Beijing and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 April 2012 10.58 BST

 

The spotlight on the Bo Xilai affair has turned back on to political tensions in China following reports that officials in Chongqing wiretapped a call to the country's president, Hu Jintao – helping to trigger the scandal that unseated Bo.
Official accounts of the case have portrayed it as being unrelated to the political struggle for power in the country. Bo is instead accused of unspecified disciplinary violations while his wife, Gu Kailai, is accused of murdering the British businessman Neil Heywood.

 

Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - the hospital of horrors

Special Report day two: Stillbirths, disabilities, deformities too distressing to describe - what lies behind the torments in Fallujah General Hospital?

 

Fallujah

Thursday 26 April 2012

  The pictures flash up on a screen on an upper floor of the Fallujah General Hospital. And all at once, Nadhem Shokr al-Hadidi's administration office becomes a little chamber of horrors. A baby with a hugely deformed mouth. A child with a defect of the spinal cord, material from the spine outside the body. A baby with a terrible, vast Cyclopean eye. Another baby with only half a head, stillborn like the rest, date of birth 17 June, 2009. Yet another picture flicks onto the screen: date of birth 6 July 2009, it shows a tiny child with half a right arm, no left leg, no genitalia.
"We see this all the time now," Al-Hadidi says, and a female doctor walks into the room and glances at the screen. She has delivered some of these still-born children. "I've never seen anything as bad as this in all my service," she says quietly. 

  Thursday, April 26, 2012, 11:12

Hollande wants European Union fiscal treaty reopened

 RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC in Paris, MARY MINIHAN and HARRY McGEE

 

The leading candidate for the French presidency, François Hollande, has laid out plans to add new elements to the European Union fiscal treaty but left the door open to a compromise if he wins the election.
Mr Hollande, who leads president Nicolas Sarkozy in opinion polls 10 days before the run-off, said if elected he would not ratify the treaty unless a deal was agreed on measures to promote jobs and economic growth.
He also indicated that the result of Ireland’s referendum should not be taken for granted.

Nigeria bought massive corruption for cheap fuel: report

For the price of cheap gasoline, Nigeria paid billions of dollars into a corrupt government system of fuel subsidies that saw huge contracts awarded to shady companies without any oversight, according to a lawmakers' report.

The report, debated in Nigeria's House of Representatives, is breathtaking in its scope, even for a country where many grudgingly accept graft as a way of life in the OPEC nation's oil industry, government and private sector.
But some fear it may not change much, especially as it implicates some of the same elite class that dominate politics and business in Nigeria.
"We are fighting against entrenched interests whose infectious greed has (hurt) our people," House Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal said. "Therefore, be mindful they will fight back and they normally do fight dirty."

Aid to Pakistan: $2.6 billion spent, little ability to show it

Anti-US sentiments and foreign policy squabbles are thwarting good US public relations from reaching turbulent, poor border regions of Pakistan.

 By Taha Siddiqui, Contributor / April 25, 2012

 Khalil Afridi recently survived a fatal attack by militants when a hand grenade was hurled at him. “They want me to quit development work, because of my association with Western donors,”
He has been a social worker in Khyber Agency, an area bordering Afghanistan through which supply routes run, for the past eight years and is currently working on water projects with the US Agency for International Development (USAID). But he says it’s too dangerous to tell this to locals. Instead, he says, “We tell people it’s the Pakistani government funding these projects.”
Anti-US sentiments and foreign policy squabbles are thwarting good US public relations from reaching turbulent, poor border regions of Pakistan. They are also putting the lives of aid workers there at risk.
he says.

Ex-Liberia President Charles Taylor guilty in 'watershed' war-crimes case

By msnbc.com staff and news services
 THE HAGUE -- In a historic ruling, a U.N.-backed court on Thursday convicted ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor of war crimes during a conflict that left 50,000 dead.
Taylor, 64, was charged with murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers and sexual slavery during intertwined wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. However, the court found him guilty of only some of the charges.
Taylor is the first head of state convicted by an international court since the post-World War II Nuremberg military tribunal.
The tribunal found Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity by supporting notoriously brutal rebels in return for "blood diamonds."

Six In The Morning

Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - Sayef's story 

 

Special Report day one: The phosphorus shells that devastated this city were fired in 2004. But are the victims of America's dirty war still being born?

 

Fallujah

Wednesday 25 April 2012 

 

For little Sayef, there will be no Arab Spring. He lies, just 14 months old, on a small red blanket cushioned by a cheap mattress on the floor, occasionally crying, his head twice the size it should be, blind and paralysed. Sayeffedin Abdulaziz Mohamed – his full name – has a kind face in his outsized head and they say he smiles when other children visit and when Iraqi families and neighbours come into the room.

But he will never know the history of the world around him, never enjoy the freedoms of a new Middle East. He can move only his hands and take only bottled milk because he cannot swallow. He is already almost too heavy for his father to carry. He lives in a prison whose doors will remain forever closed.

Merkel feels domino effect of anti-austerity sentiment

Nicholas Kulish

April 25, 2012

 

 With political allies weakened or ousted, Angela Merkel's seat at the head of the European table has become much less comfortable, as a reckoning with Germany's insistence on lock-step austerity appears to have begun. ''The formula is not working, and everyone is now talking about whether austerity is the only solution,'' Jordi Vaquer i Fanes, a political scientist and director of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs in Spain, said.
''Does this mean that Merkel has lost completely? No. But it does mean that the very nature of the debate about the eurozone crisis is changing.

 

 

UN ponders next step in Sudan conflict

MICHELLE NICHOLS NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - Apr 25 2012 09:13

 The UN Security Council demanded on Tuesday that Sudan immediately stop airstrikes on South Sudan and will consider in the coming days what further steps to take to stop clashes between the East African neighbours spiralling into war.

Senior UN officials told the 15-nation body that aerial bombing of South Sudan's Unity State on Monday night had killed 16 civilians, injured several dozen and caused significant damage to infrastructure.

The Sudanese army has denied carrying out air strikes.

 

 

 Taiwan chooses to shoot blanks

 

 By Jens Kastner

  Roughly concurring with the mediagenic naval maneuvers jointly being held by China and Russia in the West Pacific and the United States-Philippine Balikatan drills in the South China Sea, the Taiwanese military conducted its annual Han Kuang exercises.

However, although close to a quarter of a million military personnel and all of the island's weaponry systems were involved, not a single bullet was fired, with the sounds of shooting aired by loud speakers.

The Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) government under Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou came up with a startling explanation: live-fire drills were excluded in order to reduce carbon emissions. While the Chinese side is certain to appreciate Ma's

 eco-friendly attitude of late, not everybody on the island buys the green spin. 

 

 

Argentina's move to nationalize oil firm YPF highlights Spain's decline

 

Spain used to be one of the most powerful economic forces in Latin America, but now it's struggling to punish Argentina for nationalizing a Spanish-owned oil producer.

 By Andrés Cala, Correspondent

 Spanish and European leaders directed fresh threats towards Argentina yesterday over the nationalization of Spanish-controlled oil producer YPF. But in a clear sign of Spain’s withering might in South America, their threats increasingly sound like pleas. Years of economic decline have diminished Spain’s regional sway and there seems little Spain can do.

 Last week the Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner moved to nationalize YPF, expropriating 51 percent of the company controlled by Spanish company Repsol. YPF is Argentina’s biggest oil company and Ms. Kirchner accused Repsol of failing to invest properly in increasing oil production, which contributed to Argentina becoming a net oil importer in 2008. Repsol, like other foreign companies, has said regulations limit profits, and by extension how much it can investment.

 

China wary as US, Philippines stage war games

By Reuters

 

ULUGAN BAY, Philippines - Hundreds of American and Philippine troops waded ashore on Wednesday in a mock assault to retake a small island in energy-rich waters disputed with China, a drill Beijing had said would raise the risk of armed conflict.
The exercises, part of annual U.S.-Philippine war games on the western island of Palawan, coincide with another standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels near Scarborough Shoal in a different part of the South China Sea.
China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan across the South China Sea, each searching for gas and oil while building up their navies and military alliances.

Six In The Morning

Robert Fisk: Iraq's road back from oblivion

 

Memories of sectarian war, kidnapping and child killing are fading. It is safer. But nine years since Saddam's fall, Robert Fisk meets many who feel they have lost their homeland

 

Tuesday 24 April 2012 

 

"Al-Qa'ida killed two of our men here two days ago," the cop said. "Then they called us up to tell us the name of their operation – on a police radio!" We were standing in rebuilt Fallujah, where the police request all foreigners to call by for an escort. We got six, one wearing a ski mask. You get the idea. As a police colonel said later: "Al-Qa'ida [is] still here, they are a nuisance, to me personally when I have to move around the city. But they are not what they were."

We were standing in the old US Marine base not far from the newly re-built railway station – there are, of course, no trains – and the pale stencil of "USMC" was still on the wall. But there was dust blowing around the yard and some of the sandbags had broken open.

Le Pen's Result 'Is a Blemish on French Democracy'

 Socialist challenger François Hollande may have got the biggest share of the vote in the first round of the French presidential election, but the real winner seems to be right-wing populist Marine Le Pen. German commentators argue that incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy only has himself to blame for his poor showing.

The results of Sunday's first round of the French presidential election had barely been announced when attention already began shifting to the runoff on May 6. Current President Nicolas Sarkozy's chances of victory seem slimmer than ever, especially after the psychological blow of becoming the first incumbent president to lose in the first round since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

But Sarkozy isn't throwing in the towel yet, and the campaign over the next two weeks is expected to be a tough one. Observers were quick to point out that both Socialist Party candidate François Hollande, who won the first round with 28.6 percent of the vote, and Sarkozy, who received 27.2 percent, will make efforts to woo supporters of the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen. She shocked France by getting almost 18 percent of the vote, the best-ever result for her National Front.

NGOs plead for aid as millions starve in the Sahel

 DAKAR, SENEGAL - Apr 24 2012 07:01

 Aid agencies say they are facing a multimillion-dollar funding shortage to deal with a food crisis in the Sahel, the zone in northern Africa that stretches across the continent from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans, marking the transition between the Sahara desert and the savanna regions to the south.

"A huge gap in funding for aid projects ... is threatening to leave millions of people hungry in the coming months," a coalition of aid agencies said on Monday. The people of the Sahel, they said, are resorting to increasingly desperate measures to survive.

 

Europe undams Myanmar sanctions

 By Chris Stewart

China's President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao will be well satisfied with an easing of European Union and United States sanctions on Myanmar, even as Western companies anticipate the gains to be made from the poor but resource-rich country.

The EU on Monday suspended its sanctions against Myanmar for a year. Foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the EU wants to support progress made in the country "so it becomes irreversible". She is due to visit Myanmar this week. The US has previously eased some sanctions and is considering lifting some trade and financial restrictions. 

 

UN chief urges rival Sudans to hold dialogue

Ban Ki-moon condemns Sudanese air raids on the South as President Bashir rejects talks in favour of "guns and bullets".

 Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has condemned air raids by Sudan on South Sudan, and called on the countries' leaders to return to dialogue.
"The secretary-general condemns the aerial bombardment on South Sudan by Sudanese armed forces and calls on the government of Sudan to cease all hostilities immediately," Eduardo del Buey, deputy UN spokesman, said on Monday.
Ban "reiterates that there can be no military solution to the disputes between Sudan and South Sudan", the spokesman said.

 "He [Ban] calls on President [Omar] al-Bashir and President [Salwa] Kiir to stop the slide toward further confrontation and urges both sides to return to dialogue as a matter of urgency."
The UN chief’s call for calm came after Bashir ruled out any future talks with his southern counterpart, who is in Beijing to drum up support from China.

California voters to consider ending capital punishment

 By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com

 California voters will decide whether to abolish the death penalty this November, the San Jose Mercury News reported. A group in favor of doing away with the nation’s largest death row gathered more than 800,000 signatures –- enough to put capital punishment on the ballot.

Death would be replaced with life in prison without possibility of parole, according to the Mercury News. Inmates currently on death row would live out life in prison instead.
"It's a proposition whose time has come," measure proponent Jeanne Woodford, a former San Quentin State Prison warden, told reporters Monday morning, according to the Mercury News.

The Lost Tribe

 An ancient indigenous tribe is on the verge of extinction in India's Andaman Islands. Habitat loss, disease and exploitation could wipe out the 400-strong Jarawa tribe, who still hunt using bows and arrows.
 Lapses in policing and continued activity by tour operators, who encourage 'human safaris' where Jarawa women and children have in the past performed for tourists, are partly to blame for jeopardising the tribe's existence.

Many activists want to close the main road into the tribal reserve to protect the tribe from further interaction with the outside world, but it is a lifeline providing food and work for the island's 600,000 inhabitants.

Six In The Morning

Danger from the deep: New climate threat as methane rises from cracks in Arctic ice 

 

Scientists shocked to find greenhouse gas 70 times more potent than CO2 bubbling from deep ocean

 Monday 23 April 2012

  A new source of methane – a greenhouse gas many times more powerful than carbon dioxide – has been identified by scientists flying over areas in the Arctic where the sea ice has melted.

Click here to see 'The deadly depths - Methane release in the Arctic' graphic
The researchers found significant amounts of methane being released from the ocean into the atmosphere through cracks in the melting sea ice. They said the quantities could be large enough to affect the global climate. Previous observations have pointed to large methane plumes being released from the seabed in the relatively shallow sea off the northern coast of Siberia but the latest findings were made far away from land in the deep, open ocean where the surface is usually capped by ice.

Villager's dilemma on border where Georgia and Russia clashed

 The Irish Times - Monday, April 23, 2012
 DANIEL McLAUGHLIN

EVERY DAY, a few metres from the small house he shares with his grandparents, Malkhaz Kurtayev crawls under rolls of razor wire and into another country. Or at least that is what the Russian troops who observe his daily journey, and who created this jagged borderline, would call it.
Kurtayev lives in Bobnevi, a village divided by the boundary between territory controlled by the Georgian government 60km down the road in Tbilisi, and that claimed by the separatist South Ossetians in their capital Tskhinvali, a similar distance the other way.
In August 2008, a conflict that had been “frozen” since the early 1990s erupted into war between Georgia and Russia, as Tbilisi’s military launched an assault to reclaim control of the rebel region and Moscow responded by pouring troops across the Caucasus to drive it back.

Chinese media pressed to turn on fallen official

Edward Wong, Jonathan Ansfield

April 23, 2012 BEIJING: Bo Xilai, an ambitious Communist Party official, fuelled his political career by intimidating and courting Chinese journalists, shaping his public image and seizing the spotlight in a way no peer had done. But with his purge from the party's top ranks this month, Mr Bo has found himself the target of the same media apparatus that he once so carefully manipulated, and that now vilifies him in the name of the party's leaders.

Peacekeepers stay put in Western Sahara amid disappointment

LOUIS CHARBONNEAU NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - Apr 23 2012 08:00

 The UN Security Council has reached a deal on a draft resolution to renew the mandate of the peacekeeping force in the disputed territory of Western Sahara this week, envoys said, but the Polisario Front independence movement and South Africa are disappointed.

The renewal of the mandate of the peacekeeping force, known as MINURSO, marks an annual battle in the council between Morocco, backed by France, and African nations supporting Polisario.

 US, Turkey and Iraqi Kurds join hands

 By M K Bhadrakumar
 There was something very odd when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday that Turkey was becoming a "hostile state" in the region. After all, Baghdad is supposed to be the "soul" of the Arab world and Turkey is supposed to be the role model for democratized Arab nations like Iraq.

"The latest statements of [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip] Erdogan are another return to the process of interfering in Iraqi internal affairs and it confirms that Erdogan is still living the illusion of regional hegemony," Maliki said, adding: "It is clear that his statements have a sectarian dimension, which he used to deny before, but have now become clear, and all Iraqis reject them

Shift on executive power lets Obama bypass rivals

President takes routes around congressional Republicans 

blocking his agenda

 By Charlie Savage

 

One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism. 

 “We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.”
For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals.

 

 

North Korea: The cult of the Kim's

Revealing the lengths the country's propaganda department will go to to ensure Kim Jong-un's image is untarnished.

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Conservative nonprofit ALEC acts as stealth business lobbyist

　Membership includes nearly 2,000 state legislators — and corporations

By MIKE McINTIRE
Desperate for new revenue, Ohio lawmakers introduced legislation last year that would make it easier to recover money from businesses that defraud the state. It was quickly flagged at the Washington headquarters of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a business-backed group that views such “false claims” laws as encouraging frivolous lawsuits. ALEC’s membership includes not only corporations, but nearly 2,000 state legislators across the country — including dozens who would vote on the Ohio bill.

Bahrain Grand Prix to go ahead despite protester's death
Formula One race subject to mounting global outcry after discovery of body of protester allegedly abducted from village by military

Paul Weaver in Manama and Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk, Saturday 21 April 2012 23.27 BST
Bahrain's Formula One grand prix will go ahead despite a growing international outcry about the staging of the race in the Gulf state that intensified on Saturdayfollowing the discovery of the body of a protester allegedly abducted from a village by security forces. According to the opposition party Wefaq, the body of 36-year-old Salah Abbas Habib Musa, a father of five, was found on a rooftop in the Shia village of Shakhoura the day before the race

A bad heart killed Neil Heywood. But whose?
Theories about the Briton's death in China are stacking up

Clifford Coonan , David Randall Beijing Sunday 22 April 2012
Solving the Neil Heywood mystery is beginning to resemble a bizarre parlour game. A variety of people each tell an utterly implausible story and everyone else has to guess which one is true – except, in this case, the suspicion is growing that no one remotely in the know can be relied upon. This weekend, after several days of new testimony, claims and authorised leaks, there is still no version of his death that makes coherent sense. This is hardly surprising. Nearly all the "facts" come from a normally secretive officialdom which is, itself, far from disinterested. The result is that we have no convincing version of what happened, but a number of intriguing theories. First, however, the facts we know:

Getting a real taste of living in the 'Big Durian' one smelly mouthful at a time
Indonesia correspondent Michael Bachelard just had to take a bite out of Jakarta's stinky nickname.

April 22, 2012
AMONG the racks of rip-off brand clothing in markets across Asia is a T-shirt whose design harks back to an old Apple computer ad campaign. But instead of the instantly recognisable company trademark, the shirt bears a picture of an oddly shaped, spiky looking fruit with an Apple-sized bite taken out of it and the catch-line "Eat Different".

Libya says building case against Gaddafi son: ICC prosecutor


Reuters
Libya says it is building its case against Muammar Gaddafi's detained son, gathering witnesses and documents, according to the Hague-based war crimes prosecutor, as it seeks to persuade the International Criminal Court to allow for a local trial. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Saif al-Islam last year after prosecutors accused him and others of involvement in the killing of protesters during the revolt that eventually toppled his father, who ruled with an iron fist for 42 years.

Globe to Globe: Maori Troilus and Cressida puts haka into Shakespeare
As the Globe to Globe Festival begins in London, the director of New Zealand's version of Troilus and Cressida explains how she put Maori culture at the heart of Shakespeare's Trojan tragedy.

By Tim Masters Entertainment and arts correspondent, BBC News
Of all the theatre companies who are presenting all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in 37 different languages at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, it is New Zealand's Ngakau Toa who have travelled the furthest. The Maori version of Troilus and Cressida begins the six-week Globe to Globe season on Monday, which is also Shakespeare's birthday. "It's a great honour to be on first - we are thrilled and quite nervous," says director Rachel House, during a break from final rehearsals in Auckland.

Chinese whispers: Murder, mystery, the media

When Chinese politician Bo Xilai was suspended from his high-profile post last month, few could have predicted it would become the biggest political drama China has seen in decades. It is now a tangled web of murder, corruption and political in-fighting - and the media have been spinning the narrative in all directions. State controlled outlets were always going to back the government decision to oust Bo, but in a country where millions are now logging on to micro-blogging sites every day, new media is alive with breaking news, often speculating on developments ahead of the official propaganda machine. In this week's News Divide, we look at a political scandal that has seen the single voice of the state competing with a cacophony of online voices. This week's News Bytes: A Mexican viral video gets pulled from the web and criticised for dressing-up child actors as drug traffickers and corrupt politicians; Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange makes his debut as a talk show host for the Kremlin-backed channel RT; a British production company starts work on a film about Rupert Murdoch and it is not about the hacking scandal; and what happened to the Fox News employee who dispatched anonymous memos from within its New York headquarters?

Six In The Morning

Pakistan plane crash investigation begins

　Air crash investigators are combing the wreckage of a passenger plane that crashed near the Pakistani capital Islamabad, killing all 127 on board.

The BBC 21 April 2012
Rescue teams working through the night recovered many bodies as well as the jet's flight recorder, officials said. The Bhoja Air Boeing 737, which had flown from Karachi, crashed on its approach to the airport during a storm. Grieving relatives of the victims have been gathering at airports in Karachi and Islamabad. The head of Bhoja Air has been barred from leaving the country pending the outcome of the inquiry, officials said

Robert Fisk: This is politics not sport. If drivers can't see that, they are the pits
Supposing it was Assad shelling out £40m for a race. Would Ecclestone be happy to give him a soft sporting cover for his repression?

Saturday 21 April 2012
When the Foreign Office urges British motor racing fans to stay away from Bahrain, this ain't no sporting event, folks, it's a political one. The Bahraini authorities prove it by welcoming sports reporters but refusing visas to other correspondents who want to tell the world what's going on in this minority-run, Saudi-dominated kingdom. But what do our lads tell us from the circuit, 25 miles from the Bahraini capital, Manama? Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton are only in it for sport. Bahraini repression of its democratic majority?

Artists Turn Against Pirate Party
The rise of the Pirate Party has been swift and virtually without opposition, but resistance is now emerging. Writers and musicians have a problem with the Internet-freedom party's approach to intellectual property.

By Sven Becker, Jan Fleischhauer and Rene Pfister
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 82, is an ideal source of information when it comes to revolutionary movements. An essayist, poet and author, Enzensberger has been first a participant, then an onlooker and chronicler for every political upheaval and movement meant to lead the way into the future for the last five decades. Enzensberger, then a Marxist, was present for the birth of the "68ers," what the Germans call the participants of the political movements and student protests of the 1960s. He shared the fervor of Germany's center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in their fight against conservative politicians Franz Josef Strauss and later Helmut Kohl, and of course he rooted for the country's Green Party as it grew to become an established parliamentary party.

India's border force has crossed the line


Ben Doherty April 21, 2012
The Border Security Force soldiers are unfailingly polite and hospitable, but conspicuously armed and resolute. We go no further. ''Why do you need to go to the border? There is nothing there,'' we are told over endless cups of chai with progressively more senior officers, all of whom refuse us permission to travel beyond their cantonment, or photograph ''the fence'' a few hundred metres away. The border these men patrol is not India's antagonistic front with Pakistan, nor its contested line with China.

Ugandan troops play jungle cat and mouse with Kony


RIVER CHINKO, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
A Ugandan "hunting squad" pushes through the thick jungle of central Africa in search of the fugitive warlord Joseph Kony. It is tough terrain that favours the hunted. At times the Ugandan soldiers cover as little as 3km a day, labouring through hanging vines and dense foliage that cut visibility to a few metres and wading chest-deep through crocodile-infested rivers.

Torture claims emerge in China's Bo Xilai scandal
The Chinese politician who launched an attack on organised crime is accused of heading a police apparatus that carried out "evil" operations against its enemies.

By Michael Bristow BBC News, Beijing
Bo Xilai spearheaded a crackdown on Chongqing's mafia organisations, but people are now coming forward claiming this involved torture and false accusations. These allegations have emerged since Mr Bo was stripped of his political roles for serious violations of communist party discipline. These violations are linked to the death of the British businessman Neil Heywood, who was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing last November.

Random Japan

Miwa Kaneoya

BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN…

• Empress Michiko decided to forego the standard dress-and-heels ensemble in favor of traditional kimono and wooden sandals when she attended a memorial for victims of the March 11 quake/tsunami. It seems she was worried that she might have to spring into action if the Emperor, who had recently undergone heart bypass surgery, started to go down, and high heels just might not cut it under those circumstances.
• Speaking of ailing Emperor Akihito, it was reported that he twice had to have fluid drained from his chest after his heart surgery.
• In Iran, thousands of women have been training in the way of the ninja, but it’s more for fitness and protection, their instructor says, not to unleash an army of trained female assassins on an unsuspecting world, as some Western media have speculated.
• Maya Nakanishi, a 26-year-old paralympian who lost her right leg in a work accident five years ago, put out a calendar featuring semi-nude photos of herself to raise funds to get her to London for the Games this summer. You go girl!
• A 33-year-old train conductor was arrested for grabbing the boobs and nether regions of a 16-year-old high-school girl on an out-of-service Odakyu Romance Car. He is also accused of “committing sexual acts” with the same girl at a karaoke shop and in a hotel on two other occasions. Hold on… sounds he was just trying to add some romance to an ongoing relationship.
• Meanwhile, a 23-year-old art teacher at a junior high school in Kagawa Prefecture was canned after surreptitiously snapping photos of students’ snappers up their skirts while on the job.
• Ninety-two people wolfed down as many fermented beans as they could during a natto-eating contest in Ibaraki Prefecture. A 27-year-old from Nara was crowned king of the natto-eaters after downing 350 grams of the sticky stuff in 27.7 seconds.

THAT’S MIGHTY NICE OF YA

• US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her government decided to “exempt Japan and 10 European countries from its new financial sanctions against Iran over the latter’s suspected nuclear weapons program as they have significantly reduced their oil imports from Tehran.”
• The Japan Meteorological Agency said the nation’s first cherry blossoms of the year bloomed in Kochi on March 21.
• Tokyo subway officials at Kasumigaseki station on the Hibiya Line marked the 17th anniversary of Aum Shinrikyo’s March 20, 1995, sarin gas attack that killed 13 people and sickened over 6,000. A moment of silence was observed.
• The last graduation ceremony was held at Japan’s oldest wooden schoolhouse in Takahashi, Okayama Prefecture. The school had been open for over 100 years but declining attendance spelled doom for the old building.

Six In The Morning

Signs of an Asian Arms Buildup in India’s Missile Test

　

By HEATHER TIMMONS and JIM YARDLEY
NEW DELHI — India’s successful test on Thursday of a long-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead is the latest escalation of an arms race in Asia, where the assertiveness and rising military power of China has rattled the region and prompted a forceful response from the Obama administration. By launching the Agni 5, a ballistic missile capable of reaching Beijing and Shanghai, India joined a small club of nations with long-range nuclear capability, including China, Britain, France, Russia, Israel and the United States. The missile was launched Thursday morning from a small island off India’s eastern coast, a day after the test had been scratched because of weather.

Murdered Briton spoke of 'empress'


Luke Heywood and Tania Branigan April 20, 2012
BRITISH businessman Neil Heywood privately confessed to friends that Gu Kailai - the woman now suspected of murdering him - was ''mentally unstable'' and behaved like an unforgiving ''empress''. In conversations in the three years before his death, Mr Heywood admitted that Ms Gu's behaviour had grown increasingly erratic. He told one friend that Ms Gu - wife of the leading Chinese politician Bo Xilai - was comporting herself ''like an old-fashioned Chinese aristocrat or empress''.

Makeover for Rio's favelas: What is at stake?
One of every five residents in Rio de Janeiro lives in a favela, and faces public security and health threats. But the city's plan to improve slums has been met with distrust, writes a guest blogger.

By Julia Michaels
Has anyone calculated the total number of people who have ever lived their whole lives in a favela? Since the first one, here in Rio, on the Morro da Favela, occupied in 1897? It’s surely more than six million [...L]iving under constant threat to one’s health, physical safety, mental balance, etc. [W]e are talking about generations of people who lived in ghettos. People long on the margin, limited in their capacity to fulfill their human potential.

Massacre Survivors Struggle to Overcome Trauma and Guilt
As the trial of Anders Breivik gets underway in Oslo, survivors of the massacre he perpetrated are using a range of sometimes unique therapy methods to overcome their trauma. But, for many of them, the hardest question remains: Why did I survive?

By Gerald Traufetter and Antje Windmann
Adrian Pracon, 22, is about to face his own shooting for the third time. This time, he wants to show his 28-year-old sister, Katharina, the place where he should have died. Adrian only saw the killer's black boots in the moments before the shot came, but he knew the man wanted to murder him, too. "It's so strange how I remember the situation," Adrian tells his sister, sitting beside him in his silver Alfa Romeo. "It all happens as if it were in slow motion."

Nicolas Sarkozy: Why is the French president so disliked?
If President Nicolas Sarkozy fails to win a second term, as many polls are predicting ahead of Sunday's first round of voting, perhaps the biggest factor will be the personal loathing that he elicits in so many of the French.

By Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris
From the moment he took office in 2007, no French president in modern times has been the object of such blatant dislike. It is an animosity quite distinct from opposition to his actual policies. All leaders expect hostility for the things they do. Few get it in such measure for the things they are. "There is an irrational hatred of Nicolas Sarkozy among much of the public, and it is playing a major part in this election," says Jean-Sebastien Ferjou who edits the news website Atlantico.

Mali and me: Man from Microsoft who returned to run the country
The farm boy who became a Nasa scientist faces his biggest challenge yet – as prime minister

Daniel-Howden Friday 20 April 2012
A widespread and worsening hunger crisis, at least two competing rebellions that have cut the country in two, active Islamic jihadists, a military coup and massive population displacement are some of the items in the in-tray of Mali's leaders. If "rocket science" has become the popular shorthand for complexity then the situation in the West African nation demands a rocket scientist. Enter Cheick Modibo Diarra, Africa's first astrophysicist, formerly of Nasa, and now the acting Prime Minister of Mali.

Gulf Fisheries in deccline after oil disaster

Nearly two years after BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen and scientists say things are getting worse. New Orleans, LA - Hundreds of thousands of people living along the US Gulf Coast have hung their economic lives on lawsuits against BP. Fishermen, in particular, are seeing their way of life threatened with extinction - both from lack of an adequate legal settlement and collapsing fisheries. One of these people, Greg Perez, an oyster fisherman in the village of Yscloskey, Louisiana, has seen a 75 per cent decrease in the amount of oysters he has been able to catch. "Since the spill, business has been bad," he said. "Sales and productivity are down, our state oyster grounds are gone, and we are investing personal money to rebuild oyster reefs, but so far it's not working." Perez, like so many Gulf Coast commercial fisherman, has been fishing all his life. He said those who fish for crab and shrimp are "in trouble too", and he is suing BP for property damage for destroying his oyster reefs, as well as for his business' loss of income.

Quake Assessment Projects Neraly 10,00 Dead In Tokyo

Latest projection takes into account lessons from the March 11 disaster

 

A massive quake beneath northern Tokyo Bay would kill about 9,700 people, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Wednesday.

In its latest damage projection report, the metropolitan government said approximately 70 percent of the area covered by Tokyo's 23 wards would suffer a destructive temblor of upper 6 or stronger on the Japanese seismic intensity scale.

This is worse than the previous estimate of six years ago, which envisaged an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 striking the greater Tokyo area, and reflects new findings from the March 11 quake and tsunami. It also takes into account a recent study by the science ministry that a massive inland quake threatening the metropolitan areas will top the 7-level Japanese seismic intensity scale.

 

Six In The Morning

Syria 'failing to keep to truce', says Ban Ki-moon

　The UN secretary general says Syria has failed to comply with its obligation under a peace plan to pull troops and heavy weapons out of urban areas.

The BBC 19 April 2012
In a letter to the UN Security Council, Ban Ki-moon also called for an observer mission to be expanded from the small number already in the country to 300. There are continued reports of violence in Syria, threatening a fragile ceasefire that began a week ago. However, Mr Ban also said there was an "opportunity for progress". Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet foreign ministers in Paris later to discuss the crisis. The peace plan, negotiated by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, aims to end more than a year of unrest thought to have killed at least 9,000 people.

Nato chiefs and politicians at war over 'risky' Afghan withdrawal plans
International summit split over cost-cutting exit strategy that would see security forces radically depleted as soon as West leaves

Kim Sengupta Author Biography Brussels Thursday 19 April 2012
The blueprint for the West's exit strategy for the long war in Afghanistan is being set out in a critical meeting, with military officials and diplomats battling to prevent a proposed depletion of Afghan forces while the security situation remains precarious. The conference in Brussels took place as an American newspaper published photographs yesterday of US soldiers next to the dismembered bodies of Taliban suicide bombers. The Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, had to apologise to the Afghan delegation and fellow Nato ministers for the way the reputation of international forces had been "besmirched" by the actions apparently depicted in the pictures published in the Los Angeles Times.

'I Dream of Meeting Breivik'
He's an American in his early twenties and he worships a mass murderer. On the third day of the trial against Anders Breivik, Kevin Forts has outed himself as a pen pal of the accused. Breivik's delusional ideology is gaining support in a small, but growing scene of Islam haters.

By Gerald Traufetter in Oslo
The young man has black hair and a piercing gaze, and poses with his arms behind his back. He wants to appear decisive and courageous for the photographer. His parents and friends have tried to dissuade him from taking this step, says Kevin Forts from Worcester in the US state of Massachusetts. "But I want to, so that I can represent the views of Anders Breivik that have otherwise been demonized by the mass media," the 23-year-old told* reporters from the Norwegian tabloid VG, the country's most-read newspaper.

Assange-link lawyer on 'inhibited' fly list


Henrietta Cook April 19, 2012 - 2:30PM
An Australian human rights lawyer and WikiLeaks supporter has reportedly been placed on a watch list and requires permission from the Department of Foreign Affairs to fly home. Jennifer Robinson claims she was stopped at Heathrow airport this morning, only days after meeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ms Robinson said she was told she was on an inhibited travel list and unable to enter Australia without permission from the Department of Foreign Affairs

Rape video turns world's spotlight on SA justice system


PHILLIP DE WET - Apr 19 2012 08:09
The blaze of public interest around the videotaped gang rape of a Soweto teen is set to shine new light on how underage suspects and rape cases are handled in SA. The blaze of publicity and public interest around the apparent videotaped gang rape of a teenager in Soweto last week could provide an important test of legislation around the handling of children in the criminal justice system, experts said this week. But it could also show up shortcomings in the handling of rape cases.

India tests long-range nuclear missile
India launches nuclear-capable missile that would give it capability of striking major Chinese cities for the first time

Reuters in Bhubaneswar guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012
India test-fired a long range missile capable of reaching deep into China and Europe on Thursday, thrusting the emerging Asian power into an elite club of nations with intercontinental nuclear weapons capabilities. A scientist at the launch site confirmed the launch was successful, minutes after television images showed the rocket with a range of more than 5,000km (3,100 miles) blasting through clouds from an island off India's east coast. "It has met all the mission objectives," SP Dash, director of the test range, told Reuters. "It hit the target with very good accuracy."