Six In The Morning

Bullets Over Dialog That’s How Despots Operate  

After Egypt’s revolution, the people have lost their fear  

They didn’t run away. They faced the bullets head-on’

 

“Massacre – it’s a massacre,” the doctors were shouting. Three dead. Four dead. One man was carried past me on a stretcher in the emergency room, blood spurting on to the floor from a massive bullet wound in his thigh.

A few feet away, six nurses were fighting for the life of a pale-faced, bearded man with blood oozing out of his chest. “I have to take him to theatre now,” a doctor screamed. “There is no time – he’s dying!”

Others were closer to death. One poor youth – 18, 19 years old, perhaps – had a terrible head wound, a bullet hole in the leg and a bloody mess on his chest.

Building It Because You Can Doesn’t Work Well  

‘Brazil’s deadliest mudslides on record provided impetus for the government to start enforcing stricter housing regulations and for low-income favela residents to accept relocation.



Brazil’s floods force urban planning rethink



Nova Friburgo, Brazil

Nilson Gomes de Santa patiently watches a demolition team circle his home in the interior of Rio de Janeiro State. Workers are about to tear down the bricks this mason laid with his own hands 25 years ago, and he’s fine with that.

Other than his three dogs and a tank of cooking gas, there’s little left in his bus-sized home, which stands alone on a dirt-caked hill where a neighborhood bustled just a month ago. Then a month’s worth of rain fell in one day, sending mudslides flowing down this hillside favela (shantytown). After seeing homes swept away and neighbors buried, Mr. Gomes de Santa resigned himself to eviction.

People Always Think Bigger Is Better It Isn’t  

Germany’s Chicken Wars



The Controversial Practices of Poultry Mega-Factories



A turkey chick  is fighting its way into life, hatching somewhat more slowly from its shell than the others. Its egg, perhaps, was a little too far from the top.

There are 125 others, all hatchlings looking at their new world for the first time. Their nest is a plastic box, 85 by 60 centimeters with narrow slits in the sides — the legs and beaks of those buried further down stick out.

The chicks are thrown out of the box onto a steel chute, from which they fall onto a conveyor belt, at least the ones that look acceptable. But in every box there are a few chicks that don’t quite make it to the top, flounder or are still struggling to emerge from their shells. Sometimes hatchery workers give those chicks a few extra minutes.

One Of These Things Is Well! Quite Different From The Other  

 

A new start for a land where Buddha meets Louis Vuitton



Weathered old folk  in fur hats and goatskin gowns and young couples wearing designer sunglasses are squeezing into Gandan monastery to lay money at the feet of a small and ornate statue of Buddha. The room has the yak butter smell of monasteries in Lhasa but the scene is otherwise more natural, lively and shambolic.

Portly old monks in maroon robes are counting bundles of money and child trainees are stifling yawns. They’ve been sitting and chanting all day and into the night for most of the two-week celebration for Mongolia’s lunar new year.

“You Can Trust Me” You Know I Won    

 

Tension mounts over Uganda poll outcome

 

Museveni, who has  ruled for 25 years, was confident before Friday’s polls that his achievements in ensuring economic stability and security would result in a landslide win.

His main challenger, Kizza Besigye, cried foul even before the election got under way and has vowed to release his own results if there was any suspicion of fraud.

“If we keep getting results, we’ll keep on working through the night,” said electoral commission secretary Sam Rawkwoojo, as he supervised tallying in the national stadium’s conference centre.

Give Us Four Day’s We’ll Show You How To Ruin A Country  

House Set to Approve Cuts; Time Short to Stop Shutdown

 

WASHINGTON – House Republicans on Friday marched confidently toward approving the largest spending cuts in modern history, setting the stage for a standoff with Senate Democrats and the White House that each side has warned could lead to a shutdown of the federal government early next month.

With just two weeks to go before the stopgap measure now financing the government expires, and Congress in recess next week, party leaders conceded that there was not enough time to forge a deal and that a short-term extension would be needed to avert a shutdown.

But with the rhetoric in the House only growing more strident, and with politically charged amendmentsdominating the action on Friday, lawmakers and Washington at large have begun to face the possibility that even a temporary accord will be difficult to achieve.