Tag: Six In The Morning

Kerry in Japan for talks on North Korean tensions

14 April 2013 Last updated at 08:00 GMT

The BBC

US Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Japan, the last stop of his four-day Asian tour which has focused on tensions on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea has recently threatened attacks against South Korea and the US, sparking alarm in the region.

After meeting China’s top leaders on Saturday Mr Kerry said China was “very serious” in its pledge to help resolve tensions with North Korea, its ally.

Mr Kerry has said the US will defend itself and its allies from any attack.

Speculation has been building that the North is preparing a missile launch, following reports that it has moved at least two Musudan ballistic missiles to its east coast.

Iran nuclear talks unproductive

Officials from six world powers and Iran have ‘long and intensive discussions’ in Kazakhstan, but don’t get far on the nuclear issue, an EU official says.

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON – The latest round of international negotiations over Iran’s disputed nuclear program concluded Saturday with no sign of progress and the future of the fitful diplomatic effort uncertain.

Officials from Iran and the six world powers had “long and intensive discussions” in the two-day session in Kazakhstan, but ended “far apart on the substance,” Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, said in Almaty.

The group didn’t schedule another meeting, as they usually have done in the past to show that diplomacy would continue with at least low-level conversations. Officials also said the two sides did not narrow their differences in the final minutes, as often happens.

Libya’s south teeters toward chaos – and militant extremists

Libya’s long-neglected, isolated southern region has grown more lawless since the fall of Moammar Kadafi. Only ill-trained tribal militias hold Islamist extremists at bay.

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times

SABHA, Libya – Their fatigues don’t match and their pickup has no windshield. Their antiaircraft gun, clogged with grit, is perched between a refugee camp and ripped market tents scattered over an ancient caravan route. But the tribesmen keep their rifles cocked and eyes fixed on a terrain of scouring light where the oasis succumbs to desert.

“If we leave this outpost the Islamist militants will come and use Libya as a base. We can’t let that happen,” said Zakaria Ali Krayem, the oldest among the Tabu warriors. “But the government hasn’t paid us in 14 months. They won’t even give us money to buy needles to mend our uniforms.”

A decade after Iraq invasion, America’s voice in Baghdad has gone from a boom to a whimper

By Ernesto Londoño, Sunday, March 24, 7:35 AM

BAGHDAD – The United States set the tone for its new relationship with Iraq a decade ago with a bombing campaign dubbed “shock and awe,” and spoke with a booming voice during the ensuing years as it shaped the country’s future.

Today, America’s voice here has been reduced to a whimper.

With no troops on the ground to project force and little money to throw around, the United States has become an increasingly powerless stakeholder in the new Iraq. It has failed to substantively rein in what it sees as government abuses that have the potential to spark a new sectarian war. It also has had little success in persuading Baghdad to stop tacitly supporting Iran’s lethal aid to Damascus, an important accelerant in the neighboring conflict.

Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for renaissance

17 March 2013 Last updated at 04:57 GMT

The BBC

The new Chinese President, Xi Jinping, has said he will fight for “the great renaissance of the Chinese nation,” in his first speech as head of state.

He was speaking at the end of the annual National People’s Congress.

At a rare news conference later, new Premier Li Keqiang said Beijing would “win the trust of the people”, pledging to cut government spending.

The comments come as the Communist government has completed a once-in-a-decade leadership transition.

Mr Li, who already holds the number two spot in the Communist Party, is now taking over the day-to-day running of the country, succeeding Wen Jiabao.

Under cover of darkness, Afghan women head to battle

By Mandy Clark, Correspondent, NBC News

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Severely outgunned, the battle was going badly. It seemed like certain defeat. Then, from out of the crowd stepped a young girl of around 14. She grabbed the pole from the fallen flag-bearer, held it up, and called out to her brothers-in-arms to fight to the death.

Though she was shot dead, her rallying cry was seen as the turning point of the 1880 Battle of Maiwand; a triumph for the Afghans, and a devastating loss for British forces during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Her name was Malalai, Afghanistan’s Joan of Arc.

“If you go back into history, before we only had one female soldier named Malalai, but now I have a lot of Malalais in my Special Forces,” said Colonel Jalauddin Yaftaly, who heads the elite units. There are more than 1,000 women in the Afghan Army – and about two dozen have made it into Special Forces.

‘A concentration camp for little boys’: Dark secrets unearthed in KKK county

Excavators discover 50 bodies buried in the grounds of a boys’ borstal, which was only shut in 2010

DAVID USBORNE   FLORIDA  SUNDAY 03 MARCH 2013

For years, almost no one at the Dozier School even knew about the burial ground in a clearing in the woods on the edge of campus. It was forbidden territory. The soil here, churned in places by tiny ants, holds more than the remains of little boys. Only now is it starting to give up its dark secrets: horror stories of state-sanctioned barbarism, including flogging, sexual assault and, possibly, murder.

That the Arthur G Dozier School – a borstal for delinquent boys founded in 1900 – was not a gentle place was well-established. Boys as young as six were chained to walls, lashings with a leather strap were frequent and, in the early decades, children endured enforced labour, making bricks and working printing presses. When it was closed in 2011, it had already been the subject of separate federal and state investigations.

 France’s military operation in Mali in ‘final phase’

BBC 24 February 2013 Last updated at 00:02 GMT

French President Francois Hollande has said his country’s forces are engaged in the “final phase” of the fight against militants in northern Mali.

He said there had been heavy fighting in the Ifoghas mountains, where members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) were thought to be hiding.

Mr Hollande also praised Chadian troops for their efforts in the same area.

Thirteen Chadian soldiers and some 65 militants were killed in clashes on Friday, according to the Chadian army.

Chad’s government has promised to deploy 2,000 troops as part of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali (Afisma).

US drones

Speaking in Paris on Saturday, President Hollande said “heavy fighting” was taking place in the far north of Mali, near the Algerian border

Karzai says he intends to ban Afghan troops from requesting foreign airstrikes

By Richard Leiby, Sunday, February 17, 7:04 AM

KABUL – President Hamid Karzai announced Saturday he intends to ban Afghan ground forces from calling in NATO airstrikes on residential areas – even though his country’s fighters have had to rely in the past on such air power in operations against Taliban militants.

“Our forces ask for air support from foreigners, and children get killed in an airstrike,” Karzai said in a speech at a military academy here, reinforcing his often truculent posture toward the U.S.-backed international coalition that has long supported his government.

Ten civilians, including five women and four children, died in a NATO airstrike Tuesday night in a remote village in eastern Kunar province that also killed three militant commanders, one of them linked to al-Qaeda, Afghan officials said.

India’s Kumbh Mela festival holds most auspicious day

10 February 2013 Last updated at 06:48 GMT

 By Soutik Biswas

BBC News, Allahabad

The main day of bathing is taking place at India’s Kumbh Mela, with more than 30 million pilgrims expected to take a dip at the confluence of India’s Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

This is the most auspicious of six bathing days at the event, billed as the biggest human gathering on Earth.

More than eight million took to the waters on the opening day, 14 January.

Hindus believe a festival dip at Sangam – where the rivers meet – will cleanse sins and help bring salvation.

In all, up to 100 million pilgrims are expected to bathe in the holy waters in January and February at the 55-day Kumbh Mela, which is held every 12 years.

Why extreme Islamists are intent on destroying cultural artifacts

 By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News

LONDON — They have destroyed the iconic Buddhas of Bamiyan, smashed down the fabled “end of the world” gate in the ancient city of Timbuktu and even called for the destruction of Egypt’s ancient pyramids and the Sphinx.

Extreme Islamist movements across the world have developed a reputation for the destruction of historic artifacts, monuments and buildings.

This week, officials confirmed that up to 2,000 manuscripts at Mali’s Ahmed Baba Institute had been destroyed or looted during a 10-month occupation of Timbuktu by Islamist fighters. Some experts have compared the texts to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Mali conflict: AU set to discuss troop deployments

 The BBC 27 January 2013 Last updated at 06:56 GMT

African Union leaders are meeting to discuss the conflict in Mali, as members move to deploy troops to help the French-led operation there.

African states have pledged 7,700 troops to support French and Malian forces in their campaign against Islamist militants in northern Mali.

Only a small part of the African force has so far deployed.

French-led troops have retaken several towns since France intervened two weeks ago, and on Saturday captured Gao.

The French defence ministry said troops gained control of the city – northern Mali’s most populous – after securing the airport and a strategic bridge to the south.