Six In The Morning

Gaddafi fights for his future as up to 200 die in Benghazi

 


Regime accused of hiring foreign mercenaries as clashes between supporters and pro-democracy demonstrators in the country’s second city escalate

By Andrew Johnson and Susie Mesure Sunday, 20 February 2011

Libya was approaching a “tipping point” last night as widespread protests against Colonel Gaddafi’s regime were met with increasing violence from security forces.

Dozens of protesters were reported killed by sniper fire from security forces in Benghazi, Libya’s second city, yesterday when violence flared again as crowds clashed after funerals for people killed in fighting on Friday. “Dozens were killed. We are in the midst of a massacre here,” one eyewitness reported.

Clashes were reported in the town of al-Bayda, where dozens of civilians were said to have been killed and police stations came under attack. In all, the death toll was reported to have reached 120. Doctors from Aj Jala hospital in Benghazi confirmed 1,000 people had been injured.

Where Empire Goes To Die  

The country has little chance of being ready for the withdrawal of Nato forces



Afghanistan: Weren’t we meant to be winning by now?



Twelve months ago, Marjah was a ghost town, deep in rural Helmand province and deep in the grip of the Taliban. The bazaar was closed and those who could run had fled; the rest cowered in their homes.

It was never going to be easy to take from the Taliban. More than 120 Taliban and at least 60 coalition and Afghan troops paid the price with their lives. Today, the Afghan national flag flies over the town, the schools are open and the opium trade is under attack. Marjah is crawling back to something approaching normality

ET Is One Rich Dude Look At All Those Homes  

 

Planet probe spots hot prospects



It’s just one data point among the 1,235 potential worlds identified by NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting probe, but you can’t help noticing it on a graph. The planetary candidate known as KOI 326.01 sticks out as the one object that’s estimated to be the size of Earth or smaller, with an average temperature that’s lower than water’s boiling point.

If scientists confirm that what they’re seeing actually exists, KOI 326.01 could go down as the closest analog to our own planet in the current crop of Kepler data. But that’s a big if.

Taking Ones Hate To Far  

 

Russian Trial to Bare a Face of Nationalism



MOSCOW – It once seemed  as if Nikita Tikhonov was positioning himself to join this country’s political elite: he attended the prestigious Moscow State University, founded a right-wing political magazine called The Russian Way and worked as a campaign aide for a parliamentary candidate.

A self-declared patriot with a passion for Russian history, Mr. Tikhonov refused to smoke or drink alcohol, insisting that a blend of temperance and civic engagement might help revive his country.

Now, Mr. Tikhonov is on trial for murder.

Prosecutors contend that his right-wing intellectual pursuits mutated into nationalistic hatred that led him to kill a prominent human rights lawyer and a young journalist two years ago.

Idiots That Are Republicans  

 

Congress, Obama brace for showdown as government shutdown looms



The prospect of a government shutdown appeared more possible Saturday after the House passed a budget measure in the pre-dawn hours that cuts $61 billion – and was immediately rejected by Senate Democrats and President Obama.

The House plan, which was approved on a party-line vote at 4:40 a.m. after five days of debate, eliminates dozens of programs and offices while slashing agency budgets by as much as 40 percent. Federal funding for AmeriCorps and PBS would cease. Hundreds of millions would be cut from border security, and tens of millions would be withheld from funding for the District of Columbia.

Discovering Your Home Once Again  

Chinese New Year brings the world’s largest migration as millions of city workers head home to their villages, reconnecting briefly, and awkwardly, with families and a life they barely know.



China’s annual long march

 


Reporting from Beijing and Liloucun, China –

Li Guangqiang rises early and pulls on his sharpest city clothes: dark jeans fashionably distressed, puffy down coat, black pouch slung over one shoulder. An outfit carefully chosen to announce: I am not a farmer or a villager. Not anymore.

Li’s journey will be long, and he has no time to lose. Heading out into the dry, dirty cold of a Beijing winter, he rolls his suitcase along frozen canals the shade of curdled milk, through the warren of alleyways where he and other migrants sleep in makeshift shelters of concrete block walls and corrugated tin roofs.