Six In The Morning Thursday March 6

Kerry on Ukraine: Solution is tough, but situation better than yesterday

By Catherine E. Shoichet. Laura Smith-Spark and Michael Holmes, CNN

March 6, 2014 -- Updated 0236 GMT (1036 HKT)

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- Foreign ministers from around the world didn't strike a deal over the Ukraine crisis Wednesday, but U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said they agreed on one key thing: They'd rather talk than fight.

"All parties agreed today that it is important to try to resolve these issues through dialogue," Kerry told reporters after a series of meetings in Paris with foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia.

Kerry described the talks as "the beginning of a negotiation" and called them "very constructive." Finding a resolution will be difficult, he said, "but I'd rather be where we are today than where we were yesterday."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius offered an optimistic assessment.

"For the first time, something has moved in the process," he said, "and we will continue to talk."

Saadi Gaddafi extradited to Libya

Government says former ruler’s son has been transferred from Niger on charges of embezzlement and making armed threats

Niger has extradited Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi to Libya where he has been placed in a Tripoli prison, the Libyan government said on Thursday.

Libya had been seeking the extradition of Saadi, who had fled to the southern neighbour nation after the toppling of Gaddafi in a Nato-backed uprising in 2011.

“The Libyan government received today Saadi Gaddafi and he arrived in Tripoli,” the cabinet of the Libyan prime minister, Ali Zeidan, said in a statement.

Saadi, one of Gaddafi’s seven sons, was being held by judiciary police forces, the government said. It thanked Niger for its co-operation and said Saadi would be treated according to international justice standards for prisoners.

Right-Wing Extremism: Germany's New Islamophobia Boom

By SPIEGEL Staff

Across Germany, right-wing organizations are using anti-Islam rhetoric to further their ideas -- and finding a receptive audience. Now legal experts are debating whether it's time for a new kind of hate-crime legislation.

Stachus is one of Munich's nicest squares. It is rich in tradition and filled with pedestrians -- and perfect for Michael Stürzenberger's purposes. Hand balled into a fist, he paces back and forth and screams, "The Koran is the most dangerous book in the world." Because a couple dozen people have come to demonstrate against Stürzenberger, police officers in bullet-proof vests are watching over the area.

A decade ago, Stürzenberger, 49, was the spokesperson for the Munich office of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. But since 2012 he has been active in a splinter party called Die Freiheit ("The Freedom"), of which he was elected federal chairman three months ago. He preaches hate against Islam and compares the Koran to Hitler's "Mein Kampf." For two years now, he's been collecting signatures opposing the planned construction of an Islamic center in Munich. He has already held over one hundred anti-Islam rallies.

Twenty years on, Rwanda's reconciliation goes on step by step

Sapa-AFP | 06 March, 2014 10:38

In the years that followed the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Immaculee Mukankundiye would hear nothing of the word reconciliation.

Th 56-year-old lost her husband and three children to Hutu extremists, who happened to be neighbours in her village of Cyendajuru near the southern city of Butare.

"I thought it would be impossible to find reconciliation, to forgive my neighbour who killed my children," she said.

But in 2007, she joined the Modeste and Innocent Association (AMI), a Catholic group set up to promote reconciliation between victims and killers. Mukankundiye says she has now been able to forgive.

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwanda's Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over the capital Kigali, an event that served as the spark for a genocide that had been months in preparation.

Southeast Asia

Mar 6, '14

Less money, less faith in US 'pivot'
By Khanh Vu Duc and Duvien Tran 

The United States' military of the 21st century will be leaner, not by strategic choice but rather fiscal necessity. The new US defense budget aims to reduce army personnel to levels not seen since before World War II. While a heavily indebted US must learn to do more with less, its strategic partners around the globe, including in Asia, must likewise downgrade their expectations and boost their burden-sharing. 

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a research institute focused on global security issues, 4.4% of US gross domestic produce was spent on defense in



2012, a slight dip from the decade-high 4.8% spent in 2009 and 2010. Even at this reduced level, military spending was still US$689 billion, or about 19% of the total federal budget. Under the new budget proposal, spending will be reduced to $496 billion.

China Remodels an Ancient Silk Road City, and an Ethnic Rift Widens

By DAN LEVINMARCH 5, 2014

KASHGAR, China — Visitors walking through the mud-brick rubble and yawning craters where close-packed houses and bazaars once stood could be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar had been irrevocably lost to the wrecking ball. A billboard looming over the ruins tries to counter that impression: “Inherit and preserve the historical culture to showcase a brand new Kashgar.”

The Chinese authorities set out five years ago to modernize Kashgar’s fabled Old City district while promising to preserve its dense Casbah-like charms. But the results underscore the growing divide between the government and the ethnic minority that lives here — the Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people who have chafed at Beijing’s rule since Communist troops took over their traditional homeland in 1949. The region, in China’s far west, is now known as Xinjiang, a Mandarin term meaning “new frontier.”