Six In The Morning

9/11 anniversary: US marks 10 years since attacks

The US has started to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

The BBC 11 September 2011

Security is tight following warnings of a possible al-Qaeda attack.

The US embassy in Afghanistan has begun the ceremonies, with events due later in the sites where four hijacked planes struck, killing nearly 3,000 people.

An official memorial to those who died is to be unveiled at the site of the World Trade Center, whose twin towers were destroyed in the attacks.

Metal barriers have been erected on roads near the World Trade Center, while police in New York and Washington are stopping and searching large vehicles entering bridges and tunnels.

Coral reefs ‘will be gone by end of the century’

They will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist

By Andrew Marszal Sunday, 11 September 2011

Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.

The claim is made in a book published tomorrow, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be “a new first for mankind – the ‘extinction’ of an entire ecosystem”. Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

Germany Lacks Clear Plan for Climate Change

Fingers in the Dyke

By Michael Fröhlingsdorf

Volker Mommsen is the mayor of one of the smallest communities in Germany. The island of Gröde, a flat green disk in the middle of the Wadden Sea, lies four kilometers (2.5 miles) off the coast of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. There are only two small raised mounds on the island, artificial dwelling hills known as terps, each of them four meters above sea level. Five houses exist on the two terps. The island is inhabited by 11 people and, in the summer, 70 cows and 60 sheep.

Mommsen, with his gray beard, weathered face, bright-colored knit socks and worn brown shoes, has lived on the island for 47 years. His daughter moved to the mainland with his two grandchildren recently, but Mommsen doesn’t want to leave Gröde.

Fukushima’s wave of despair

Six months after the tsunami, residents have yet to recover, writes Shingo Ito in Tokyo.

September 11, 2011

As Japan prepares to mark six months since the March earthquake, tens of thousands remain in temporary housing, mourning loved ones, fearful of radiation and despairing over a marathon road to recovery.

The wall of water unleashed by the record 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11 left an indelible scar on Japan’s north-eastern Pacific coast, killing 20,000 people and sparking the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

Tsvangirai: Mixed messages are hurting Zimbabwe



HARARE, ZIMBABWE – Sep 11 2011

“The inclusive government cannot create jobs because of policy conflict,” Tsvangirai told thousands at a rally to celebrate the 12th anniversary of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, warning that Zimbabwe’s high rate of unemployment was a time-bomb.

“[President Robert] Mugabe comes out and tells investors ‘your investment is safe.’ The following day [Indigenisation Minister Saviour] Kasukuwere says, ‘I want to close this and that mine.’

“This kind of policy conflict cannot create confidence. We need more confidence, not less.”

Jimmy Carter: ‘We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war’

He may live a modest life in a one-horse town, but Jimmy Carter, now 86, retains his global vision. And 30 years after leaving the White House, the peanut farmer turned president is still a man on mission. In Plains, Georgia, we found the 39th US president full of energy… and determined to make a difference

Carole Cadwalladr

The Observer, Sunday 11 September 2011

Where does Jimmy Carter live? Well, close your eyes and imagine the kind of house an ex-president of the United States might live in. The sort of residence befitting the former leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Got it? Right, now scrub that clean from your mind and instead imagine the sort of house where a moderately successful junior accountant and his family might live.

It’s what in America is called a “ranch house”, or, as we’d say, “a bungalow”. There are no porticoes. No columns. No sweeping lawns. There’s just a small brick single-storey structure that Jimmy and his wife, Rosalynn, built on Woodland Drive back in 1961 when he was a peanut farmer and she was a peanut farmer’s wife, right in the heart of the town in which they grew up. Though Plains, Georgia is barely a town. A street, might be a more accurate description. A single road going nowhere much.