China's great migration from 'Hukou Hell'
By Kristie Lu Stout, CN
February 8, 2013 -- Updated 0631 GMT (1431 HKT)
Hong Kong (CNN) -- At this very moment, in a major Chinese city, a worker is boarding a train home.
His journey is just one of 3.4 billion trips that will be taken during China's Lunar New Year.
An unprecedented number of Chinese will travel home this year to be with family and friends during the holiday, making it the world's largest annual migration of people.
Their yearly homecoming has been repeated over and over for the past two decades, reuniting families in the villages with the workers who have fueled China's economic miracle.
But that growth has come at a tremendous personal cost thanks in part to a household registration system called "hukou."
The hukou is akin to an internal passport that divides the population into rural and urban residents. As such, migrant workers are prevented from accessing social services in the city they're working in.
MIDDLE EAST
'Syria could be a second Somalia'
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon warns of increasing Islamist forces in Syria, in an interview with DW. He also believes the new Israeli goverment will try to bring the Palestinians to the table.
Deutsche Welle: The election results in Israel were surprising. The conservative Likud-Beitenu bloc remains the strongest political force but there were many votes, for instance, for Yair Lapid's new liberal party. How do you interpret the elections?
Daniel Ayalon: The Israeli public has shown again that it has its own wishes and it doesn't follow any predictions, polls, surveys or spin. So it was a real change - I would say more pluralistic in many ways. But I think the results also show that the main election issues were domestic: a universal military draft from which ultra-orthodox Jews are not exempt, political reform and housing and social justice. And in a way, it shows some disappointment in the Palestinians, who didn't want to come to the negotiating table - and maybe also some understanding that because of the so-called Arab Spring and all the chaos in the Arab countries, we have to look inside and not outside.
Final call for one of the world's scariest airports
February 8, 2013 - 11:30AM
Jonathan Watts
QUITO: One of the world's most spectacular and stomach-churning aircraft descents will be consigned to history next week when Quito closes an airport wedged between volcanoes and tower blocks high in the windswept Andes.
The Mariscal Sucre international airport, which serves the Ecuadorean capital, has long been notorious for difficult flight paths and treacherous weather that have contributed to nine fatal accidents in the past 30 years.
The current airport is probably among the five most difficult airports to fly into in Latin America.
Discovering hippies and teen rebellion when 'Searching for Sugar Man'
08 FEB 2013 00:00 - RIAN MALAN
Rodriguez’s magical transformation into a hero around the world has proved old South African hippies right — for once.
It was last Sunday morning and I’d spent the weekend googling recent developments in the story of Rodriguez, the construction worker who woke up one morning to discover he was actually a pop star in a parallel universe called Mzanzi. I checked his appearances on big-time American TV talk shows, scanned emotional fan mail on his website and watched several clips of foreign audiences erupting in standing ovations after screenings of Searching for Sugar Man, Malik Bendjelloul’s magical documentary about Rodriguez’s life, death and miraculous resurrection.
Somewhere along the line, it struck me that Rodriguez’s global triumph is actually a huge compliment to people like me — white South Africans born in the baby boom, raised on the apartheid moonbase and converted in the Sixties to the cause of long hair and teen rebellion. The rest of you would not get it, so I ran my idea past Segerman, who laughed and said: “You know then,” thereby identifying himself as an ex-hippie of exactly my own persuasion.
New mission for Knights of Malta: rescue Europe's poor
The chivalric order of the Knights of Malta, which has an annual budget of $800 million, announced the switch of emphasis from Asia and Africa to Europe this week.
By Nick Squires, Correspondent
They trace their origins back to the warrior monks who tended to fallen soldiers of the Crusades, but have since become a humanitarian organization running hospitals, clinics, and relief operations in 120 countries around the world.
Now the Knights of Malta, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, are throwing their considerable resources into tackling growing levels of poverty in Europe, in addition to their traditional commitments to countries inAsia, Africa, and the Americas affected by war and natural disasters.
The chivalric order, which has nearly 100,000 doctors, nurses, and volunteers around the globe, announced the switch of emphasis this week in Rome, where it is celebrating 900 years since receiving official approbation from the Vatican.
8 February 2013 Last updated at 02:20 GMT
Earliest placental mammal ancestor pinpointed
The creature that gave rise to all the placental mammals - a huge group that includes whales, elephants, dogs, bats and us - has at last been pinpointed.
An international effort mapped out thousands of physical traits and genetic clues to trace the lineage.
Their results indicate that all placental mammals arose from a small, furry, insect-eating animal.
A report in Science resolves the debate as to when the creature lived; it came about after the demise of dinosaurs.
That had been a hotly debated question over years of research.
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