SIx In The Morning

Russia cleans up after meteor strike

Thousands of clean-up workers sent to Ural Mountains region, where the shockwave from a passing meteor injured 950.

Last Modified: 16 Feb 2013 07:11

Thousands of workers have been dispatched to Russia's Chelyabinsk region, where a meteor streaking across the sky caused a shockwave that injured almost a thousand people, officials say.

The meteor sent fireballs crashing to Earth, smashed windows and set off car alarms all over Chelyabinsk, in the Ural Mountains region. Fragments of the rock fell on Friday in a thinly populated area of Chelyabinsk, the emergency ministry said in a statement.

"A meteorite disintegrated above the Urals [mountain range in central Russia], partially burning up in the lower atmosphere," the local office of the national emergencies ministry said in a statement.

Residents on their way to work in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a
shockwave, according to a Reuters correspondent in the industrial city that is located about 1,500 km east of Moscow.

British-Sri Lankan journalist shot in his bedroom

ANDREW BUNCOMBE 

 

 

SATURDAY 16 FEBRUARY 2013

A Sri Lankan investigative journalist has been shot and seriously injured by unidentified gunmen who stormed into his home and fired at close range. The journalist works for the same publication whose former editor-in-chief was murdered four years ago in an attack his wife blamed on the government.

Faraz Shauketaly, who holds both British and Sri Lankan citizenship, was shot by three men who broke into his house in a Colombo suburb late on Friday evening. He was taken to hospital where is expected to undergo surgery later today to remove a bullet still lodged in his neck.

Mr Shauketaly was employed by the Sunday Leader newspaper, one of the few publications in Sri Lanka that prints articles critical of the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. In January 2009, its then editor-in-chief Lasantha Wickrematunga was murdered. Before his death he had penned an essay saying that if he was killed the government would have been responsible. His killers have still not been traced.

ARMS EXPORTS

Controversial arms exports to Saudi Arabia

The Middle East is one of the most highly militarized regions in the world. Germany is among those supplying weapons to governments there. Because of human rights issues, that's controversial.

When Saudi Arabia pushed for an arms deal with Germany in December 2012, the opposition of Social Democrats and Greens was outraged, while chancellor Angela Merkel from the Christian Democrats remained silent. Then, it was about NBC armored reconnaissance tanks, battle tanks and armored transport vehicles. Now, with Saudi Arabia wanting to purchase patrol ships for 1.5 billion euros (2.01 billion Dollar), reactions are mostly the same. Opposition and experts worry about the implications such deals have for the questionable human rights policies in countries like Saudi Arabia.

Wars in prospect as climate change stirs unrest, UN told

February 16, 2013 - 8:21AM

Imagine India in 2033. It has overtaken China as the most populous nation. Yet with 1.5 billion citizens to feed, it’s been three years since the last monsoon. Without rain, crops die and people starve.

The seeds of conflict take root.

This is one of the scenarios Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presented today to members of the United Nations Security Council in New York to show the connection between climate change and global security challenges.

Either rich nations will find a way to supply needy nations suffering from damaging climate effects “or you will have all kinds of unrest and revolutions, with the export of angry and hungry people to the industrialised countries,” Schellnhuber said in an interview.

West to tighten the screws on Kenyatta

Reuters | 15 February, 2013 02:25

Kenya could next month elect a president accused of crimes against humanity, posing a diplomatic headache for the West .

If Uhuru Kenyatta wins the March 4 poll, Kenya will become the second country, after Sudan, to have a president who faces trial at the International Criminal Court, in The Hague.

The son of Kenya's founding president, Kenyatta is running a close second to Prime Minister Raila Odinga in opinion polls.

Foreign powers face a dilemma about what to do if Kenyatta wins the election.

His running mate, William Ruto, has also been indicted by the ICC for grave crimes linked to violence after the 2007 poll.

Several embassies in Nairobi said it could not be business as usual when dealing with a leader indicted by the ICC. But they will be reluctant to unravel long-held diplomatic, trade and military ties with Kenya.

Greater China

Hong Kong's colonial acres under threat

By Kent Ewing 

HONG KONG - Nearly 16 years after this city's handover from British to Chinese rule, one of the last bastions of colonial privilege - lavish clubs and sports facilities where the colonizers and their children used to wine, dine and frolic on virtually free, government-supplied land - may be about to fall. 

Faced with an angry public and an acute shortage of affordable housing, city officials announced last week that they are considering reclaiming 18 sites now occupied by private clubs and organizations paying only nominal rents to their government landlord under sweetheart agreements once signed with the colonial seal. 

If carried out, the move could result in the construction of tens of thousands of apartments in a housing market severely squeezed


by lack of space and exorbitant costs, but the main question being asked by the public in the wake of the announcement is: What took you so long?