Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Six In The Morning

Tsunami alert after powerful quake hits off Indonesia

 The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered 20 miles beneath the ocean floor and 308 miles from the provincial capital of Banda Aceh at 2:38 p.m. local time

 

 

 

 

Robert Fisk: Shot in the heart - the journalist Assad made into a martyr

Mourners demand answers over fate of cameraman killed on the Lebanese border

MAIFADOUN, SOUTHERN LEBANON



They buried Ali Shabaan as a martyr-reporter yesterday, another journalist of the Syrian war to die in action – but a Lebanese this time, unknown in the West but loved in his little south Lebanon village, not least by the girl to whom he was to have become officially engaged this Saturday.

Fatima Atwi clung to the railings of the balcony over the road from the beautiful village cemetery – all ficus trees and firs – crying tears that splashed on her yellow-and-black blouse. She wore a black veil and was inconsolable. All Shabaan's three sisters could do was embrace her. Shabaan – I met him once, briefly, in 2006, during the Israeli-Hezbollah war – had worked this past weekend on the Lebanese-Syrian border so that he could have next weekend off for his engagement ceremony.


Fears for Burma's colonial heritage

Rangoon
April 11, 2012
CONSERVATIONISTS in Burma are fighting to save Rangoon's colonial heritage amid fears many of its admired Raj-era buildings will be destroyed once sanctions against the government are lifted.
Their sense of urgency intensified last week after the US and the European Union said they would begin lifting sanctions following the success of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party in byelections.

South Sudanese 'foreigners' seek Khartoum exit

Sapa-AFP

Suddenly foreigners in a land that had been their own, the sweating South Sudanese crowded against the gates of their new embassy on Tuesday, hoping to squeeze inside for the papers to send them home.

Many like John Henry, 37, clutched yellow airline tickets from Marsland Aviation, but since Monday a ticket is no longer enough to get from Khartoum to Juba, the capital of South Sudan which became independent last July after Africa's longest civil war.
"I'm supposed to take off on Thursday," but whether that will be possible remained unclear, he said.

Cautionary tales for China
By Peter Lee 

The Chinese government has been assiduously stamping out rumors related to the removal of Bo Xilai as the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) secretary of Chongqing. 

Some of the rumors concerned gunfire in Beijing and a possible coup attempt masterminded by Bo ally and security supremo Zhou Yongkang. The rumors were baseless and, as demonstrated by their spurious detail, malicious. 

It wasn't as if somebody heard a convoy of backfiring taxis or a fireworks demonstration and innocently jumped to the wrong conclusion. 


Brazil wins the gold medal in gridlock

President Dilma Rousseff, seeking to modernize the country's transportation network, has sold three major state-owned airports to private interests.



SAO PAULO, Brazil — If you plan to fly somewhere in Brazil on a busy weekend, you'd better be prepared to wait. At some airports, up to a third of the flights can be canceled or delayed.

If you choose to drive, you'll sit in traffic. The 50-mile trip from Sao Paulo to nearby beaches for the Carnaval holiday this year took as long as five hours.

If you're counting on the planned bullet train between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, good luck with that. It won't be ready when Brazil hosts soccer's 2014 World Cup. In fact, the transportation minister said recently that it won't be operating until 2022, at the earliest.

North Korea says fuel being injected into rocket

PYONGYANG -- North Korea said on Wednesday it was injecting fuel into a long-range rocket "as we speak'' ahead of a launch condemned by its neighbors and the West.
The launch is set to take place between Thursday and next Monday and has prompted neighbors such as the Philippines to re-route their air traffic just in case.
Japan said it would shoot down the rocket if it crossed its airspace.
The launch of the Unha-3 rocket, which North Korea says will merely put a weather satellite into space, breaches U.N. sanctions imposed to prevent Pyongyang from developing a missile that could carry a nuclear warhead.

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