Six In The Morning Friday April 4

Would-Be Afghan Leader: Al Qaeda Will Return if U.S. Troops Go

BY JAMIESON LESKO

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The unflappable ex-jihadist commander known as "The Bulldozer" hesitates for a moment when asked if it's true that he has fathered 17 children.

Afghan presidential hopeful Gul Agha Sherzai half-jokingly confers with his team of trusted advisers -- which includes a successful 7-Eleven owner who lives on Long Island -- before coming up with his final answer: It's actually 20 kids between four wives.

But there's one thing the former provincial governor is absolutely certain of: The threatened withdrawal of all U.S. troops from his homeland by Dec. 31would have immediate and catastrophic consequences far beyond the country's borders.

“If the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, al Qaeda will come back, and Afghanistan will descend into chaos and civil war," Sherzai told NBC News in an exclusive interview. "Afghanistan will become the center of terrorism again within one month. It will turn into a cancer and will be a threat to the whole world."

Crimea: no more McDonald's or methadone after annexation

Russia's annexation of Crimea sees shutdown of fast food chain and discontinuation of methadone programme for drug users

Peter Walker

Friday 4 April 201409.12 BST

If people in Crimea were still wondering how much life might change following the Russian takeover of the peninsula, they now have an answer: no more McDonald's.

The fast food chain has announced it is closing its outlets in Crimea's main cities of Simferopol, Sevastopol and Yalta, due to what a statement on McDonald's Ukraine website referred to only as "manufacturing reasons".

While the company said work at the outlets was merely suspended and it hoped to reopen them, staff at the restaurants will be offered the chance to relocate permanently to Ukraine. Those wishing to move would keep the same job and salary and receive relocation costs for themselves and their families, including three months' rent, the statement said.

Former US President Bill Clinton admits asking about Area 51 aliens

IAN JOHNSTON

 

 

Friday 04 April 2014

Bill Clinton, the former US President, has said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if aliens visited Earth and admitted checking whether extra-terrestrials were being kept in the top secret base known as “Area 51”.

Mr Clinton discussed his views on the prospect of life elsewhere in the universe on comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show on ABC.

“In the last two years, more than 20 planets have been identified outside our solar system that seem to be far enough away from their suns and dense enough that they might be able to support some form of life,” he said, according to a report by CNN.

The arrival of an aggressive alien force bent on world domination might sound scary, but he suggested it could have at least one beneficial effect.

MH370: Malaysian authorities hiding information, says Anwar Ibrahim

April 4, 2014 - 4:45PM

Barney Henderson

Malaysia's government is deliberately concealing information that would help to explain what happened to missing flight MH370, the country's opposition leader has claimed.

In an interview that cast doubt on the official investigation into the disappearance of the plane, Anwar Ibrahim said the country's "sophisticated" radar system would have identified it after it changed course and crossed back over Malaysia.

Mr Anwar, who personally knew the pilot of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that went missing in the early hours of March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, called for an international committee to take over the Malaysian-led operation because "the integrity of the whole nation is at stake".

Ghost towns haunt S.Africa's strike-hit platinum belt

Fri Apr 4, 2014 6:23am GMT

By Zandi Shabalala and John Mkhize

MARIKANA South Africa (Reuters) - Shad Mohammed's electronics and household store in South Africa's platinum belt has survived a series of mining strikes over the 14 years it has been serving customers in the dusty town of Marikana.

Yet with the latest stoppage now in its 10th week, he has sold just 10 phones instead of well over 100, and has had to branch out into deliveries to avoid giving up and going home to Pakistan, another statistic in a devastating industrial dispute.

"Our business is totally dependent on the mine workers," Mohammed, 38, said among shelves filled with cell phones, laptops and large pots. "If they don’t work we really suffer."

Members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) have downed tools at Lonmin, the main employer in the tough town of Marikana, and rivals Anglo American Platinum and Impala Platinum in a strike over wages, hitting 40 percent of global production.

Signs of underground ocean found on Saturn moon

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

An ocean at least as large as Lake Superior lies below a thick layer of ice on a moon of Saturn, new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggests.

The results, published in the journal Science, support earlier signs that this small moon has liquid water. That means Saturn's sixth-largest moon could have been -- or could now be -- hospitable to life.

This discovery puts Enceladus in an exclusive club of extraterrestrial worlds in the solar system that appear to have a subsurface water ocean. The others are Titan, another moon of Saturn, and Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Callisto and Ganymede, also moons of Jupiter, may also have oceans under ice.

"As far as whether one should go first to Europa or Enceladus, I look at this as a kind of a cornucopia of habitable environments in the outer solar system," study co-author Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University said in a press conference Wednesday.