Six In The Morning Sunday June 8

8 June 2014 Last updated at 01:29

Brazil Olympics: Rio bay 'will not be clean for 2016'

Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes has said that the Brazilian city will not be able to clean the polluted bay where Olympic sailing competitions will be held before the 2016 Games.

Brazil had made a commitment to reduce pollution in the Guanabara Bay by 80%.

But Mr Paes admitted that the target would not be met.

He regretted the missed opportunity but told the AP news agency that the pollution didn't pose a risk to the health of athletes.

Olympic sailors who visited Rio de Janeiro recently described the bay as an open sewer.

As forests are cleared and species vanish, there's one other loss: a world of languages

A new report shows a direct link between disappearing habitats and the loss of languages. One in four of the world's 7,000 spoken tongues is now at risk of falling silent for ever as the threat to cultural biodiversity grows

• John Vidal
• The Observer, Sunday 8 June 2014

Benny Wenda from the highlands of West Papua speaks only nine languages these days. In his village of Pyramid in the Baliem valley, he converses in Lani, the language of his tribe, as well as Dani, Yali, Mee and Walak. Elsewhere, he speaks Indonesian, Papua New Guinean Pidgin, coastal Bayak and English.

Wenda has known and forgotten other languages. Some are indigenous, spoken by his grandparents or just a few hundred people from neighbouring valleys; others are the languages of Indonesian colonists and global businesses. His words for "greeting" are, variously, Kawonak, Nayak, Nareh, Koyao, Aelak, Selamt, Brata, Tabeaya and Hello.

New Guinea has around 1,000 languages, but as the politics change and deforestation accelerates, the natural barriers that once allowed so many languages to develop there in isolation are broken down.

Exclusive: As the Democratic Republic of Congo suffers another day of bloodshed, its soldiers talk with astonishing candour of their own brutality

Officially the country is at peace, but murder and rape are ever-present threats

KITTY KNOWLES , CHIARA RIMELLA

 

 

Sunday 08 June 2014

The Congolese soldiers march through the night, but not towards battle. In the dark, they are hunting for women who have fled their homes in Minova to hide in the bushes. The women know that if they are seen, they will be raped and maybe killed.

The army has been ordered to retreat to the town, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Its young soldiers, 2,000 of them, fire gunshots in the air.

The commander gives an order. "Go and rape women," he says. The soldiers obey.

"It's true that we raped here. We found women because they can't escape. You see her, you catch her, you take her away and you have your way with her," says one soldier later. "Sometimes you kill her. When you finish raping then you kill her child. When we rape, we feel free."

Ukraine's new president stands up to Putin over Crimea

Ukraine's new president Petro Poroshenko said Russian occupied Crimea is still Ukrainian soil. Russia reportedly tightened border security.

By Richard Balmforth, Reuters 

KIEV

Ukraine's new president Petro Poroshenko said his country would never give up Crimea and would not compromise on its path towards closer ties with Europe, spelling out a defiant message to Russia in his inaugural speech on Saturday.

The 48-year-old billionaire took the oath of office before parliament, buoyed by Western support but facing a crisis in relations with Russia as a separatist uprising seethes in the east of his country.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in March, weeks after street protests ousted Poroshenko's pro-Moscow predecessor Viktor Yanukovich, in a move that has provoked the deepest crisis in relations with the West since the Cold War.

"Citizens of Ukraine will never enjoy the beauty of peace unless we settle our relations with Russia. Russia occupied Crimea, which was, is, and will be, Ukrainian soil," Poroshenko said in a speech that drew a standing ovation.

Soldiers, police deploy across Bangkok fearing anti-coup protests

 30 minutes ago

Bangkok (AFP) - Thousands of soldiers and police were deployed across Bangkok on Sunday, an official said, as anti-coup protesters vowed to stage flashmob rallies in several locations in defiance of an army edict banning political assemblies.

Small but vehement protests have been held since the military seized power from the civilian government on May 22, despite the junta's move to ban all public protests.

The majority have taken place in the Thai capital where demonstrators have become increasingly creative to avoid detection and arrest, including adopting a three-finger salute from the "Hunger Games" films.

See-through cabins and passenger pods: Is this the future of flight?

By Katie Pisa and Tracey Hobbs, for CNN

Toulouse, France (CNN) -- The disruptive days of thunderous, fuel-guzzling planes hovering in our skies could be a thing of the past. So too could the tortuous queues and endless boarding process, if futuristic flight concepts become reality.

Since the first commercial passenger flight in 1914, 65 billion passengers have taken to the skies and another 65 billion are expected to do the same before 2030. And experts say efficient, greener performance is what will steer aviation into the next century.

"A major breakthrough in an airliner will bring half a percent, 1% greater fuel efficiency, which doesn't sound like much -- but to an airline, it's huge. It's millions of dollars (in savings) a year," said Robert van der Linden, chair and curator of air transportation at theSmithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum.

The Airbus A380 is the world's biggest passenger aircraft, and its future depends on constant redevelopment and improving performance.