14 May 2013 Last updated at 08:46 GMT
By Suzanne Goldenberg in Newtok, Alaska
An artwork found in the lost Parisian apartment has sold for almost £1.8 million
May 14, 2013 - 10:01AM
Desperate to save children from being used as soldiers in the DRC, residents of the 'Triangle of Death' have launched a campaign to end the practice.
Middle East
Hawking and a brief history of boycotts
By Ramzy Baroud
It is an event "of cosmic proportions", said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description regarding Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated on May 8 by Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor.
Hawking is a world-renowned cosmologist and physicist. His scientific work had the kind of impact that redefined or challenged entire areas of research from the theory of relativity, to quantum mechanics and other fields of study. This towering figure is also wheelchair-bound - suffering from complete physical paralyses
caused by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease. For Hawking, however, such a painful fact seems like a mere side note in the face of his incredible contributions to science, ones that are comparable to only few men and women throughout history.
Outrage at Syrian rebel shown 'eating soldier's heart'
A video which appears to show a Syrian rebel taking a bite from the heart of a dead soldier has brought strong condemnation.
US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the city of Homs, and said his actions were a war crime.
The main Syrian opposition coalition said he would be put on trial.
The video, which cannot be independently authenticated, seems to show him cutting out the heart.
"I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog," the man says referring to President Bashar al-Assad as he stands over the soldier's corpse.
America's first climate refugees
Newtok, Alaska is losing ground to the sea at a dangerous rate and for its residents, exile is inevitable.
By Suzanne Goldenberg in Newtok, Alaska
What is a climate refugee?
The immediate image that comes to mind of “climate refugees” is people of small tropical islands in the Pacific or of a low-lying delta like in Bangladesh, where inhabitants have been forced out of their homes by sea-level rise.
The broader phenomenon is usually taken to be people displaced from their homes by the impact of a changing climate – although the strict definition of a refugee in international law is more narrow including people displaced by war, violence or persecution, but not environmental changes.
With climate change occurring rapidly in the far north, where temperatures are warming faster than the global average, the typical picture of the climate refugee is set to become more diverse. Sea ice is in retreat, the permafrost is melting, bringing the effects of climate change in real time to residents of the remote villages of Alaska.
These villages, whose residents are nearly all native Alaskans, are already experiencing the flooding and erosion that are the signature effects of climate change in Alaska. The residents of a number of villages – including Newtok – are now actively working to leave their homes and the lands they have occupied for centuries and move to safer locations.
Unlike those in New Orleans forced to leave their homes because of hurricane Katrina, their exile is not set in motion by a single cataclysmic event. Climate change in Alaska is a slow-moving disaster. But its effects are already very real for the native Alaskans who will be America’s first climate refugees.
Sabrina Warner keeps having the same nightmare: a huge wave rearing up out of the water and crashing over her home, forcing her to swim for her life with her toddler son.
"I dream about the water coming in," she said. The landscape in winter on the Bering Sea coast seems peaceful, the tidal wave of Warner's nightmare trapped by snow and several feet of ice. But the calm is deceptive. Spring break-up will soon restore the Ninglick River to its full violent force.
In the dream, Warner climbs on to the roof of her small house. As the waters rise, she swims for higher ground: the village school which sits on 20-foot pilings.
Revealed: Eerie new images show forgotten French apartment that was abandoned at the outbreak of World War II and left untouched for 70 years
An artwork found in the lost Parisian apartment has sold for almost £1.8 million
Other than a thick layer of dust covering the furniture, the room looks exactly as it would have done 70 years ago when its occupants fled Paris for the south of France as the Second World War erupted in Europe.
With Germany devising the Fall Gelb – a military sub-campaign later known as the Manstein Plan, with an objective conquering Northern France – the owner of the chic apartment decided that leaving the capital was the only way she could guarantee her safety.
The flat’s titleholder, a woman known only as Mrs De Florian, never returned to the apartment and never rented it out. Its existence only came to light in 2010, when Mrs De Florian died without issue at the age of 91 and experts were brought in to value the property.
China on alert against 'dangerous' Western values
May 14, 2013 - 10:01AM
Chris Buckley
The Chinese Communist Party has warned officials to combat "dangerous" Western values and other perceived ideological threats, according to accounts of a directive that analysts said reflects the top leader Xi Jinping's determination to preserve top-down political control even as he considers economic liberalisation.
The warning emerged when Chinese news websites carried accounts from local party committees describing a directive from the Central Committee General Office, the administrative engine of the party leadership under Mr Xi.
DR Congo province in push to save child soldiers
Desperate to save children from being used as soldiers in the DRC, residents of the 'Triangle of Death' have launched a campaign to end the practice.
The United Nations has several ongoing efforts to stop the enlistment of children in the troubled country but this is the first grassroots campaign in the southeastern Katanga province.
Launched on April 1, the initiative led by Congolese non-governmental organisation Action Against Poverty (ACP) targets children, the broader population and the armed movements themselves.
Across the DR Congo – a potentially wealthy, resource-rich nation ravaged by successive wars from 1996 to 2003 and still highly volatile in the east – thousands of children are believed to have been recruited into militias.
Middle East
May 14, '13
|
Hawking and a brief history of boycotts
By Ramzy Baroud
It is an event "of cosmic proportions", said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description regarding Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated on May 8 by Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor.
Hawking is a world-renowned cosmologist and physicist. His scientific work had the kind of impact that redefined or challenged entire areas of research from the theory of relativity, to quantum mechanics and other fields of study. This towering figure is also wheelchair-bound - suffering from complete physical paralyses
caused by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease. For Hawking, however, such a painful fact seems like a mere side note in the face of his incredible contributions to science, ones that are comparable to only few men and women throughout history.
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