Six In The Morning

Syrian plane had illegal cargo, says Turkey's Davutoglu
A Syrian passenger plane forced to land in Turkey was carrying "illegal cargo", according to Turkey's foreign minister.

The BBC 11 October 2012
Ahmet Davutoglu said "objectionable" materials had been confiscated from the plane before it was allowed to leave. Turkey sent jets on Wednesday to intercept the plane, which was en route from Moscow to Damascus, amid rumours it was carrying military equipment. Tension between Turkey and Syria has been high since five Turkish civilians were killed last week by mortar bombs. In response, Turkey fired into Syria for the first time since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began last year. Mr Davutoglu did not specify whether any weapons had been found in an hours-long search of the plane. "There is illegal cargo on the plane that should have been reported," he told the Anatolia news agency. But unconfirmed reports in Turkish media said the confiscated cargo included boxes of military communication equipment

Chinese forced evictions on the rise, says Amnesty
Violence against residents resulted in deaths, imprisonment and self-immolations, report says

Reuters in Beijing guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 October 2012 07.23 BST
The number of forced evictions in China has risen significantly in the past two years as officials and property developers collude to seize and sell land to pay off government debt, Amnesty International has said. Property disputes in a country where the government legally owns all land are often violent and have led to growing social instability. Amnesty's 85-page report, compiled between February 2010 and January 2012, says violence exerted on residents resulted in deaths, imprisonment and self-immolations. "Potentially, millions of people in the country are at risk of these illegal forced evictions and indeed protests about forced evictions are the single biggest issue of populist discontent in the country," said Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty's senior director of research.

The year the grains failed
Our wet summer has resulted in crop yields lower than at any point since the 1980s. And while our food bills will rise, in the developing world the consequences will be disastrous

MICHAEL MCCARTHY THURSDAY 11 OCTOBER 2012
World grain prices have risen so high that families in poorer countries are being forced to schedule "food-free days" each week, according to one of the leading experts on global agriculture. The extreme rationing is an "an unprecedented manifestation of food stress," according to Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, and the most respected environmental observer of food and agricultural trends.

UK should 'make up its mind' on Europe
Over the past few days, the anti-European rhetoric coming from the British government has been increasing. But what effect does such talk have on Britain's standing in the EU?

DW-DE
Over the past few days, the anti-European rhetoric coming from the British government has been increasing. But what effect does such talk have on Britain's standing in the EU? Under mounting pressure from the right of his party, British Prime Minister David Cameron has given his strongest hints yet that he's planning to call a referendum on the UK's ties with the European Union. British "euroskeptics" are hoping this will be an opportunity to claw back powers from Brussels - and to avoid getting further entangled in costly solutions to the eurozone crisis. At the Conservative Party conference earlier this week, Cameron also threatened to disrupt EU budget talks unless other member states could agree to "proper control" of spending. Speaking to the BBC, Cameron said the budget was a "classic example" of where the UK should "probably start to draw new lines."

Uganda's Museveni admits youth unemployment is out of control
Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has admitted that growing youth unemployment in the country is a daunting task that must be prioritised.

10 OCT 2012 12:48 - DANIEL EDYEGU
Museveni, while speaking during the country's Golden Jubilee independence anniversary at Kololo airstrip on Tuesday in Kampala, said the steadfast rise in the number of university graduates has continually fallen short of the readily available jobs in Uganda. In apparent show of the enormous achievement his National Resistance Movement party (NRM) gained in the field of education since he clinched power in 1986, Museveni enumerated that enrolment in primary schools rose from 2 203 824 in 1986 to the present 8 317 420 pupils, while secondary school enrolment shot up to 1 225 326 from 123 479. The country's universities, Museveni said, enrolled more than 150 000 students compared to 5 390 in 1986.

Rio de Janeiro on building spree for Olympics, World Cup – but at what cost?
Brazil has lifted millions out of poverty in the past decade. But Rio's transformation in the lead-up to the Olympics and World Cup may be hurting those left behind.

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / October 10, 2012
The renovation of the Maracana soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro, which will host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games just two years later, is a dizzying scene: some 2,500 construction workers weld, shovel, drill, and man cranes under the sweltering sun. But the stadium is not the only furious upgrade underway in this city nestled between the mountains and the sea. Rio is undergoing a major facelift with new and improved highways, bus lanes, port infrastructure, and more. Much farther out, in poor, hillside communities called favelas, where more than 1.4 million of Rio’s 6 million residents live, there are new cinemas, sewage projects, community centers, cable cars, and roads. Brazil has lifted millions out of poverty in the past decade. But inequality remains deeply entrenched, and nowhere is that more clear than in Rio de Janeiro, where opulent seaside communities sit in the shadow of precarious mountainside favelas that started as informal settlements during the 20th century.