Six In The Morning Wednesday May 20

Where a migrant's journey begins

West African family heartbroken after sending child on treacherous journey to seek a better life in Europe.

20 May 2015 09:06 GMT | Human Rights, Humanitarian crises, Poverty & Development, Africa, Europe

Abdou Diallo has been training to be a mechanic in Senegal's capital, Dakar, for six years - since he was 10 - hoping to one day get a paying job.

But knowing that his life would likely be spent struggling to earn a small wage, the 16-year-old's parents have taken out a huge loan and sold all of the family possessions so that Abdou can try and make the treacherous journey to Europe.

While the visa to most European nations cost about $100, Abdou and his family know that Africans are rarely able to obtain such visas.

So they are paying people smugglers $3,000 to organise the trip, which will include an overland trip into Libya and then onto a boat to cross the Mediterranean.

It is a trip fraught with danger. Nearly 2,000 migrants are thought to have drowned trying to reach Europe so far this year and more than 10,000 have been rescued.

Israel scraps scheme to ban Palestinians from buses

Defence minister had approved programme to stop Palestinians working in Israel returning to West Bank on Israeli buses

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

Wednesday 20 May 2015 10.04 BST

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has cancelled a pilot scheme banning Palestinian workers from Israeli buses in the occupied territories – denounced as tantamount to apartheid – only hours after it was announced.

The plan had been approved by Netanyahu’s defence minister, Moshe Yaalon,, but was cancelled amid fierce criticism from Israeli opposition figures, human rights groups and a former minister in Netanyahu’s own party, who said it was a “stain on the face Israel” that would damage its international image.

The move had been enthusiastically welcomed by settler groups and pro-settlement MPs who had long been lobbying for the ban.

Baby Gammy: Australian father who abandoned Down syndrome surrogate child now tries to access funds donated for his care

Thai mother Pattaramon Chanbua - who is now raising the child - questioned whether David Farnell had 'gone insane' to behave like this

KATHY MARKS 

 

SYDNEY

 

Wednesday 20 May 2015

The plight of baby Gammy, born to a Thai surrogate mother andabandoned by his Australian parents after they discovered he had Down syndrome, touched people around the world last year.

They donated more than A$235,000 (£120,700) to help Gammy’s surrogate mother, Pattaramon Chanbua, raise him and pay his medical bills. Declining offers to adopt him, the 21-year-old said she would bring the baby up herself, after Gammy’s biological father, David Farnell, left him behind in Thailand, taking his healthy sister, Pipah, home with him.

Not long afterwards, it emerged that Farnell, who lives in Perth,is a convicted child sex offender. And now, almost unbelievably, the Australian charity administering the donations has revealed that he and his wife, Wendy Li, are trying to get their hands on Gammy’s unclaimed money.

The Spy Next Door: The Double Life of Agent Jack Barsky

By Susanne Koelbl

An East German national spent two decades spying for the KGB in the United States before his capture, establishing two families in two countries and leading a complicated double life. The story of how a former communist became the guy next door.

Jack Barsky's double life came to a close on the banks of the Delaware River. He had been driving from New York in his Mazda 323 when, after crossing the bridge, a police officer waved at him to pull over. Barsky came to a stop and a man in civilian clothes appeared at his window, saying, "FBI. Mr. Barsky, we need to talk."

"Am I under arrest?" Barsky asked. Then he said: "What's taken you so long?"

The hunt for the man believed to be the last KGB spy working in America ended on a Friday in May 1997. It had been 6,794 days since Albrecht Dittrich, a former East German citizen from the city of Jena, had traveled to America in order to spy for the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB.

People of Aceh on Rohingya crisis: 'It's worse than the tsunami'

May 20, 2015 - 6:12PM

Jewel Topsfield

Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax

Jakarta: The word spread via text message.

Forty-seven Rohingya and Bangladeshi people had been rescued from the sea off Tamiang, in the Indonesian province of Aceh, and they desperately needed help.

Early Saturday, the head of the Tamiang Farmers and Fishermen Association, Muhammad Hendra, sent a text to his network of contacts.

Within hours the local community had donated so many clothes he had to tell them to stop.

There were also 30 kilograms of rice, instant noodles, money and slippers – because, Mr Hendra says, the people were all barefoot.

As Russian bear stirs, Finland reconsiders its neutrality

The Kremlin's adventurism in Ukraine has brought a new allure for Helsinki to partner with NATO.

By Fred Weir, Correspondent

HELSINKI, FINLAND — Finland's tiny navy had a couple days of extreme excitement late last month, when its little coast guard cutters scoured the entrance to Helsinki Bay to catch what officials remain certain was a foreign submarine intruder. The Finnish military subsequently announced that they had located the interloper, lurking within sight of downtown Helsinki, and shooed it off with small, warning depth charges.

The incident is strikingly reminiscent of one that occurred in the watery approaches to Sweden's capital city, Stockholm, last October. After several days of frantically hunting a purported submarine, tacitly assumed to be Russian, Swedish naval officials admitted that the only evidence of the intruder – a grainy long-distance photo – actually showed a Swedish-owned surface boat.