Six In The Morning

Mladic health questions halt court hearing

Officials say interrogation will continue on Friday, despite former Bosnian Serb general’s poor physical condition.

Last Modified: 27 May 2011

 Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, captured in Serbia, has appeared in a Belgrade court, but his hearing was halted for doctors to assess his health, according to local media reports.

Mladic appeared frail and haggard during his court appearance on Thursday evening, and Serbian television station B92 reported that Milan Dilparic, the judge, had suspended the interrogation due to Mladic’s poor physical and mental health.

Mladic, who is accused of multiple war crimes charges, faces extradition to The Hague where he would be tried by a tribunal prosecuting cases relating to conflicts during the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.

The 69-year-old, who commanded Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, is alleged to have orchestrated the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995, as well as the four-year siege of Sarajevo.

Poland: Immigration to UK is back for good life despite economic crisis

Migration from eastern Europe on the rise again, with return to UK ‘driven by disappointment at home’

Helen Pidd The Guardian, Friday 27 May 2011  

The conventional narrative of the last three years suggested that as soon as the clouds of financial doom descended over the UK, Poles were on the first flight home. Many believed the do widzenia (Polish for “see you later”) was a permanent goodbye.

The Polish delis would quietly shut down, Boddingtons would return to the shelves where the cans of Lech once stood, and it would yet again be difficult to get a reliable plumber.

But things have not quite panned out that way. The UK economy may still be in the doldrums, but according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), net migration to the UK from Poland is on the up again, and Poles are now the biggest group of foreign nationals in the UK.

The Antarctic island that’s richer in biodiversity than the Galapagos

Divers last year came up with so many examples of sea life that they still don’t know how many they found

By Lewis Smith Friday, 27 May 2011

An “inhospitable lump of rock” several days sailing from the nearest civilisation has been revealed as more valuable to wildlife than the Galapagos Islands.

South Georgia is the last stop before the icy wastes of the Antarctic and is battered by the elemental forces of the Southern Ocean. Yet beneath the surface of the chill waters that surround the island lives a greater range of wildlife than on the Galapagos, which seemingly offers a much more benign environment.

Alliance of China and North Korea a ‘precious thing’

The Irish Times – Friday, May 27, 2011

CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

NORTH KOREA’S Kim Jong-il and China’s communist leadership vowed that their alliance, “sealed in blood”, would span the generations, as the secretive leader completed his week-long visit to China.

“Kim Jong-il stated that the friendship between China and North Korea and their peoples is a truly precious thing,” China’s official Xinhua news agency reported

“We must relay this friendship on from one generation to the next. That is our great historic task.”

Khartoum militia heading south, UN says



PETER MARTELL  JUBA, SUDAN

Heavily armed fighters of the nomadic Arab Misseriya tribe, key allies of the Khartoum government in the 1983 to 2005 civil war between north and south, were moving towards the soon-to-be-independent south, UN peacekeepers said.

UN mission spokesperson Hua Jiang said: “Militia that appear to be Misseriya are moving southwards. Abyei town is deserted of civilians.”

Southern officials say that the pro-northern Misseriya, a cattle-herding people who traditionally move through Abyei each year with their animals for water and pasture, are now entering Abyei in large numbers.

Hashimoto stalks anthem foes

Friday, May 27, 2011  

By ERIC JOHNSTON Staff writer    

OSAKA – Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto has stepped up his long-running feud with teachers opposed to the “Kimigayo” national anthem by pushing his political group to propose an ordinance that would force them to stand when the song is sung at school ceremonies.

Hashimoto’s Osaka Restoration Group, which consists of socially conservative politicians and older, former members of the Liberal Democratic Party, sent the proposal to the prefectural assembly Thursday.