Six In The Morning

I Am President For Life And Forever  

Can Egypt’s revolution stay the distance?

After thirty unbroken years as President of Egypt, it had seemed as if Hosni Mubarak’s charmed career was finally coming to an end.

But yesterday, Cairo’s famous traffic jams were back. Businesses, shops, and banks were open across the capital. Barack Obama spoke of the “progress” the Egyptian government was making towards reform. And though still in tens of thousands, the numbers at Tahrir Square were probably down on the previous day.

Meanwhile, Mr Mubarak, the great survivor, was using all the guile that has kept him in power for so long to produce a series of sweeteners – including a 15 per cent pay rise for state employees – to widen his public support.  

Shutting Out 50% Of The Population

A women’s conference in Addis Ababa aimed to move gender issues from the margins to the forefront of debate in Africa

Women campaign to be heard at African Union summit

“We know thatt the African Union summit is still very masculine but we are trying to bring in the voices of women,” said Gertrude Mongella, former president of the Pan-African parliament, explaining the rationale behind the shadow summit organised by the Gender is my Agenda Campaign (Gimac) in Addis Ababa on 24-26 January. A difficult proposition in a forum where, at the very highest level, there is only one female representative, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia.

The women gathered here, including Elisabeth Rehn, Finland’s first female defence minister, and former Irish president and UN high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson were truly on the margins, tucked away in the UN headquarters across town from where the preliminary AU summit meetings were taking place.

The Stupid Burns Strong And Bright In Nicolas Sarkozy  

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is facing an unprecedented magistrates strike after claiming that the incompetence of judges and the police allowed a repeat offender to allegedly murder and dismember a teenage girl.

French magistrates strike over murder of teenage girl

Courthouses across the country on Monday decided to go on strike until February 10 in protest, while two major police unions have accused the president of exploiting the murder for political gain.

The head, arms and legs of 18-year-old Laetitia Perrais were found in a pond in the west of France last Tuesday in a case that has appalled the nation.

Police were on Monday still looking for her torso in nearby ponds.

The main suspect in her murder, Tony Meilhon, 31, had been jailed several times for crimes including sexual offences, and was released in February last year. He is now in police custody.

Were On a Plane And We Wont Complain  

‘A Warning Scream from Italian Art’

Naples Museum Requests Asylum in Germany

Like many in and near Naples, Antonio Manfredi, the director of the Contemporary Art Museum of Casoria (CAM), lives in fear. Threatening phone calls, vandals and not-so-subtle warnings — the local mafia organization, the Camorra, has left little doubt that he is on their radar. What truly frightens him, though, is just how horribly Italy treats its artistic and cultural treasures.

And now, he has decided to call wider attention to his plight. At the beginning of this month, he mailed an official letter to Angela Merkel’s Chancellery in Berlin requesting asylum for his entire museum. The letter was sent in both Italian and German, and copies were forwarded to the German Embassy in Rome, as well.

Looking down The Barrel Of A Gun  

 

An armed soldier ordered us to get out of the taxi



AT LEAST they were polite. When our taxi ran into the checkpoint in the well-to-do Cairo neighbourhood of Garden City about 9.50pm on Sunday, the serious faces of the men who took our passports suggested this might take a while.

They looked like vigilantes patrolling their street to protect it from looters. But as we watched our passports being handed from man to man we realised there was a military checkpoint about 15 metres behind us.

A soldier approached our taxi and instructed the driver to move it into the street being guarded by the army. We were ordered to stay in the car.

Who Are You?  

Allegations of spying and media manipulation lay bare the divisions in Tibetan Buddhism and tensions between China and India. Mistrust between rival Karmapas belies the image of a placid religion.

A tempest in Tibetan temples

Reporting from Dharamsala, India – He’s a “living Buddha” with movie-star good looks and an iPod, a 25-year-old who rubs shoulders with Richard Gere and Tom Cruise and is mentioned as a successor to the Dalai Lama.

Now allegations that he’s a Chinese spy, and a money launderer to boot, have laid bare divisions in the outwardly serene world of Tibetan Buddhism and longtime tensions between China and India.

There’s a lot at stake. The Karmapa is among Tibetan Buddhism’s most revered figures and heads the religion’s wealthiest sect, with property estimated at $1.2 billion worldwide.