Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Family Man One Day, Rebel Fighter the Next


By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: October 12, 2013
RAMTHA, Jordan — The Syrian rebel leader was sitting comfortably on a cushion at his home here recently, his wife and children filling the rooms with conversation and laughter. Then one day he shaved off his beard and slipped back into Syria, where he leads a rebel brigade. “I cried,” said his mother-in-law, Wesal al-Aweer. “I pleaded with him not to leave.” “We were used to having him around the house,” said his wife, Montaha Zoubi, 34, “so now we feel there is an emptiness in the house.” A hardware store owner in Syria before the civil war, Hussein Zoubi, 40, took up arms against the government almost two years ago. Since then, like thousands of Syrian men in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, he has been leading the life of a commuter rebel, a fighter inside Syria and a family man across the border.

Her film about an 'honour' killing won an Emmy. Now it's being used to train police
Deeyah Khan hopes her documentary about the murder of Banaz Mahmod can help to highlight the social pressures behind such crimes and help bring change

Tracy McVeigh The Observer, Sunday 13 October 2013
Amid the glitter and glamour of this month's Emmy awards in Los Angeles, one winner dressed in a sober black suit and polo neck looked more than a little dazed as she collected her statuette. "I had to be pushed out of my seat when they announced that Banaz had won. I just sat there," said Deeyah Khan, a music producer and former pop star who picked up the Emmy for best international documentary. "I was perfectly happy just to be there and proud that a clip was being shown. I was really pleased but utterly shocked to win."

The fleet of bikers changing health care in Africa
A former motorcycle racer – and now Woman of the Year – is revolutionising medical provision across the continent

SARAH MORRISON Author Biography SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER 2013
When Andrea Coleman bought her first motorcycle six months before her 16th birthday, all she wanted to do was escape her "funny little suburb" outside London. Now, almost 50 years later, she is being credited with using motorbikes to revolutionise Africa's transport and health systems. The mother- of-three will receive the Barclays Women of the Year award at the 59th annual Women of the Year Lunch tomorrow. Coleman is not your usual global health pioneer. She left school at 16 and did not sit an academic exam until her forties. She gained notoriety in Britain in the early 1970s when, as one of only a few female motorcycle racers, she took to the tracks in Chelsea FC-colours leathers.

AU to ICC: Kenyatta stays until demands are met
African nations decided on Saturday that Kenya needs its president, and will request a delay of Uhuru Kenyatta's trial.

12 OCT 2013 18:40REUTERS, SAPA
African leaders agreed on Saturday after a meeting held at the Union's head office in addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta should not attend a trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) if the UN Security Council did not agree to delay the proceedings, Ethiopia's foreign minister, Tedros Adhanom, said. He said that the AU would request the trial be deferred under article 16 of the court's Rome Statute that allows a delay of a year subject to renewal and would request a postponement if that demand was not met. "If that is not met, what the summit decided is that President Kenyatta should not appear until the request we have made is actually answered," Tedros told journalists, explaining decisions of a meeting to discuss Africa's relations with the court.

Vietnam's New Battle for the Legacy of a War Hero
Hundreds of Thousands Turn Out to Pay Respects to Late Genera

By JAMES HOOKWAY
As a military commander, Vietnam's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap was involved in plotting the downfall of French colonists and the U.S.-backed South Vietnam. Now, a week after his death in Hanoi at the age of 102, another battle is under way—this time to manage the old warrior's legacy. Gen. Giap is an iconic figure in Vietnam and around the world. His victory against French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 helped to speed the decline of colonialism around the world, and his role in crucial campaigns against U.S.-backed forces accelerated the fall of what was then Saigon in 1975. News of his death on Oct. 4 in a Hanoi hospital was greeted with laudatory statements from the government and the country's official media; state-run newspapers have published scores of photographs of Gen. Giap from various points in his military career, often featuring him next to the revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh. Pop concerts and other events were canceled to mark his funeral this weekend, comprising a state memorial service Saturday in Hanoi and a funeral in Gen. Giap's home province of Quang Binh.

Starbucks to take on Juan Valdez in Colombia


By Marina Villeneuve, Sunday, October 13, 9:17 AM
BOGOTA, Colombia — Here in the land of coffee, the Juan Valdez coffee chain has had it easy. Its souvenir-filled stores number 170 nationwide. There are 68 in other countries, from Spain to Chile to the United States, where a store does business a few blocks from the White House. If anything, the chain named after the iconic coffee farmer — a creation of a Madison Avenue ad firm in 1959 — has faced just one main challenge: getting Colombians, more accustomed to exporting their best coffee beans, to sip white chocolate cappuccinos and iced caramel macchiatos. But now Juan Valdez has a serious competitor: Starbucks, which has 19,000 outlets in more than 60 countries. The Seattle chain, which in city after city has prompted cafes to close or remake themselves to survive, recently said that it plans to open 50 stores in Colombia in the next few years. Last week, Starbucks began scouting prime locales in Bogota for its first stores, set to open in mid-2014. The chain has more than 650 outlets in Latin America.