Six In The Morning

Toddlers freed from brick kiln bondage

(CNN)  A flaring furnace blasts another wave of searing heat on the faces of workers hauling bricks under a southern Indian sun.

They work up to 22 hours a day propping heavy stacks of bricks on their heads. None expects to be paid for this labor. None knows how long they'll be kept here. Some are as young as three years old.

Manoj Singh was one of 149 people rescued this year from a brick kiln outside Hyderabad, India. Like millions of other Indians, the toddler was born into extreme poverty.

When CNN correspondent Mallika Kapur visited Manoj's family, now back home, he and the some of the 34 other children freed, showed her how they would make the bricks from wet clay.

"They recall from their muscle memory," says Anu George Canjanathoppil, ofInternational Justice Mission, a non-profit dedicated to eradicating slavery around the world. "So if you ask them to explain what they did, they cannot say."

Older laborers, however, had plenty to say.

Cyprus holds talks with Russia after bailout rejected

Church of Cyprus offers its assets to help the country

Reuters

Cypriot leaders are holding crisis talks today to avert financial meltdown after rejecting the terms of a European Union bailout and throwing efforts to rescue the latest casualty of the euro zone debt crisis into disarray.

The rejection of an unprecedented levy on bank deposits, a condition of a €10 billion EU bailout, cast the 17-nation currency bloc into uncharted waters.

Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy all accepted biting austerity measures over the last three years to secure European aid.

President Nicos Anastasiades, barely a month in the job, gathered party leaders and the governor of the central bank at his office today.

SYRIA

Syria chemical weapons claims prompt warnings

Both the US and UN have said they are investigating opposing claims by the Syrian government and rebels over the use of chemical weapons. UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon warned such behavior would be an 'outrageous crime.'

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he remained "convinced that the use of chemical weapons by any party under any circumstances would constitute an outrageous crime," the UN said late on Tuesday.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus blamed rebels for the Tuesday attack, which they say killed 16 people and wounded 86. Rebels, for their part, claim the attack was carried out by the government, using Scud missiles.

The trucks that keep the dollars flowing
Protecting trucks on the highway from Tarin Kowt to Kandahar is big business. And exaggerating the threats may be making it even bigger

Paul McGeough

Chief foreign correspondent

TARIN KOWT: Oruzgan's millionaire police chief Matiullah Khan claims he was just a two-bit security operator until US Special Forces officers hit on the idea for his financial jackpot – protecting trucks against Taliban attacks on the highway between Tarin Kowt and Kandahar.

Despite the fact that supply convoys for the Australian and American bases in Oruzgan pay the bulk of his massive fees, he says: “They showed no interest in setting the fees I'd charge – it was all between me and the trucking.”

They needed us because we knew the area and we knew the people. We were disciplined and co-ordinated. 

Matiullah Khan

Madagascar's hungry eat grasshoppers after deadly cyclone

Sapa-AFP | 20 March, 2013 09:50

With small, silent steps, 10-year-old Borikely carefully picks her way through the tall grass of a Madagascar field in search of her dinner. She's hunting for grasshoppers, which she'll catch with a stick.

Once speared, she places them carefully in a small round straw basket and within a few minutes, she has collected dozens of insects.

This is Borikely's only meal of the day, revealing the extent of the food crisis that has gripped the Indian Ocean island since cyclone Haruna hit three weeks ago.

"I don't like grasshoppers, but I am forced to eat them since the cyclone because I am hungry," Borikely told AFP.

The storm killed 26 people and affected nearly 40 000 more, devastating several villages and forcing thousands of people to cram into emergency camps.

Middle East

Mar 20, '13

THE INVASION OF IRAQ: 10 YEARS ON
Search and Destroy: The rape of Iraq
By Pepe Escobar 

First thing we do, let's kill all mythographers (lawyerly or not): the rape of Iraq is the biggest, man-made humanitarian disaster of our times. It's essential to keep in mind this was a direct consequence of Washington smashing international law to pieces; after Iraq, any freak anywhere can unleash preemptive war, and quote Bush/Cheney 2003 as precedent. 

And yet, 10 years after Shock and Awe, even so-called "liberals" have been trying to legitimize something, anything, out of the "Iraq project". There was never a "project"; only a dizzying maze of lies - including a posteriori justifications of bombing the Greater Middle East into "democracy". 

I've been thinking about The Catalyst lately. The Catalyst was the

tank I had to negotiate every time in and out of my cramped digs on the way to the red zone, in the first weeks of the US occupation of Baghdad. The marines were mainly from Texas and New Mexico. We used to talk. They were convinced they hit Baghdad because "the terrorists attacked us on 9/11".