Six In The Morning Sunday April 19

World's mountain of electrical waste reaches new peak of 42m tonnes

The biggest per-capita tallies were in countries known for green awareness, such as Norway and Denmark, with Britain fifth and US ninth on the UN report’s list

Agence France-Presse

Sunday 19 April 2015 03.54 BST

A record amount of electrical and electronic waste was discarded around the world in 2014, with the biggest per-capita tallies in countries that pride themselves on environmental consciousness, a report said.

Last year, 41.8m tonnes of so-called e-waste – mostly fridges, washing machines and other domestic appliances at the end of their life – was dumped, the UN report said.

That’s the equivalent of 1.15m heavy trucks, forming a line 23,000km (14,300 miles) long, according to the report, compiled by the United Nations University, the UN’s educational and research branch.

Less than one-sixth of all e-waste was properly recycled, it said.

In 2013, the e-waste total was 39.8m tonnes – and on present trends, the 50-million-tonne mark could be reached in 2018.

Topping the list for per-capita waste last year was Norway, with 28.4kg (62.5lbs) per inhabitant.

El Salvador's dirty warriors to face justice for 1989 massacre of six Jesuits priests, their housekeeper and her daughter

Senior commander Colonel Montano Morales could appear in court next year on charges of terrorism, murder and crimes against humanity

NINA LAKHANI

 

MEXICO CITY

 

Sunday 19 April 2015

Colonel Orlando Inocente Montano Morales was working in a sweet factory on the outskirts of Boston when his inglorious war record finally caught up with him.

Col Montano Morales, a senior commander during El Salvador’s brutal civil war, had been quietly living in the United States for a decade when in May 2011 he and 19 former colleagues were indicted by a Spanish court on suspicion of participation in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuits priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

The massacre was one of the most notorious crimes of the war, which between 1980 and 1992 left 80,000 people dead, 8,000 missing and one million displaced – in a country the size of Wales. The vast majority of the atrocities were committed by US-backed armed forces and paramilitaries, according to the subsequent United Nations Truth Commission.

Dance for Kobane

The world’s many migrants have always carried their music, often as their only baggage. The Kurds take their dances with them, too.

by Ed Emery

At the “Syrian” camp on the harbourside in Calais, good-humoured young men gather, en route from the horrors of their countries to what they hope will be a new life in England. In 2014 the police bulldozed their first camp, and then evicted them from a second camp, but they are still there; their small tents stand on the loading bay of a disused warehouse, and a little iron stove burns bright with scavenged timber. They make sweet tea and we discuss politics, religion, music, song, war, and ways of entering Britain illegally, because that’s what they spend their days trying to do.

We come here regularly. We’re musicians. Music is a bond of solidarity. Back in November we brought Arabic instruments from London so they could play their music — songs full of nostalgia, yearning, and hopes for the future. But tonight it’s their turn to do the musicology. They pull out their mobiles and struggle to get a WiFi signal. One of them finds a soulful muwashshah from Aleppo — the wrecked city once home to that musical genre — and they sing along. Another shows us a clip of a master of the Kurdish saz (apart from one Moroccan, they are all Kurds). A third hunts for a clip of a song from (and for) his hometown of Kobane, in Syria near the Turkish border, with photos of its devastation in the Kurds’ 131-day war against the so-called Islamic State (IS).

The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State

By Christoph Reuter

An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State's takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating.

Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious. The rebels from northern Syria, remembering encounters with him months later, recall completely different facets of the man. But they agree on one thing: "We never knew exactly who we were sitting across from."

In fact, not even those who shot and killed him after a brief firefight in the town of Tal Rifaat on a January morning in 2014 knew the true identity of the tall man in his late fifties. They were unaware that they had killed the strategic head of the group calling itself "Islamic State" (IS). The fact that this could have happened at all was the result of a rare but fatal miscalculation by the brilliant planner. The local rebels placed the body into a refrigerator, in which they intended to bury him. Only later, when they realized how important the man was, did they lift his body out again.

Impressions from the Hermit Kingdom

Being able to take part in Pyongyang Marathon, to interact with the crowds lining the streets, was a unique privilege.

19 Apr 2015 07:12 GMT

Arriving in the North Korean capital is like returning to a pre-industrialised era, where there is almost no light pollution and where the only sound at night comes from the 24/7 dredging of the Taedong River.

And where, even in the comparatively mild spring cold, we occasionally caught glimpses of groups of military personnel huddled around piles of burning wood, seeking warmth.

I was later told that they are in Pyongyang as extra labour, living in temporary ACCOMMODATION while they help with a wave of construction projects.

Regular visitors to DPRK say there is more traffic on the streets than ever before. Traffic jams are not far off.

The longevity of the "traffic ladies" - the elite female cops who stand immaculately dressed in the middle of busy intersections directing traffic - is under threat.

Traffic lights are more common than a decade ago, and we saw a couple of examples of road rage as pedestrians and drivers crossed paths.

Solar Power Battle Puts Hawaii at Forefront of Worldwide Changes

By DIANE CARDWELLAPRIL 18, 2015

HONOLULU — Allan Akamine has looked all around the winding, palm tree-lined cul-de-sacs of his suburban neighborhood in Mililani here on Oahu and, with an equal mix of frustration and bemusement, seen roof after roof bearing solar panels.

Mr. Akamine, 61, a manager for a cable company, has wanted nothing more than to lower his $600 to $700 monthly electric bill with a solar system of his own. But for 18 months or so, the state’s biggest utility barred him and thousands of other customers from getting one, citing concerns that power generated by rooftop systems was overwhelming its ability to handle it.

Only under strict orders from state energy officials did the utility, the Hawaiian Electric Company, recently rush to approve the lengthy backlog of solar applications, including Mr. Akamine’s.