Why extreme Islamists are intent on destroying cultural artifacts
By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News
LONDON — They have destroyed the iconic Buddhas of Bamiyan, smashed down the fabled “end of the world” gate in the ancient city of Timbuktu and even called for the destruction of Egypt’s ancient pyramids and the Sphinx.
Extreme Islamist movements across the world have developed a reputation for the destruction of historic artifacts, monuments and buildings.
This week, officials confirmed that up to 2,000 manuscripts at Mali’s Ahmed Baba Institute had been destroyed or looted during a 10-month occupation of Timbuktu by Islamist fighters. Some experts have compared the texts to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
North Korea meeting hints at imminent nuclear test
February 3, 2013 – 5:09PM
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has chaired a high-level meeting that discussed a looming “great turn” in military capability, state media said, fuelling expectations of an imminent nuclear test.
Kim made a “historic” speech at the ruling party’s Central Military Commission meeting, attended by the heads of the army, the National Defence Commission and the strategic rocket force, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Sunday.
The meeting discussed “bringing about a great turn in bolstering military capability”, said KCNA, which gave no date or details of Kim’s speech.
It is hard to trust GM when it is in the grip of a few global giants
Don’t believe the hype: GM is in the grip of a few firms that profit from selling the chemicals they engineer their seeds to resist
John Vidal
The Observer, Sunday 3 February 2013
Thirty years ago, genetic engineers hoped new technology would revolutionise world farming and reduce or even eliminate the need for fertilisers and pesticides. It was a noble idea that deserved success.
But only promises came. In the 1990s the public was told genetic modification would increase yields enough to feed the world. Now in an age of climate change we hear that GM can reduce climate change emissions, improve drought tolerance, stimulate growth and eliminate poverty.
As murder rate drops, flood levels rise and inundate Baghdad with raw sewage
World View: Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, an incompetent and corrupt government is unable to improve life for most citizens
PATRICK COCKBURN Sunday 3 February 2013
Torrential rain caused floods all over Baghdad last week. It was not a pleasant sight: as the city’s ageing sewage system failed to cope, streets filled with murky grey water that smelled and looked as if it was heavily polluted with raw sewage. Upriver, the Tigris rose 15 feet in five hours, the highest it had been for 50 years, and dozens of villages were inundated.
The disaster is not great by Baghdad standards, given the Iraqi capital’s recent experience of car bombs, assassination, occupation and mass sectarian slaughter. I decided to take a drive to see how people were affected by the floods, what the government was doing to help them and, more generally, what the city looks like 10 years after the US-led invasion.
Israeli military breaks up Palestinian West Bank encampment
ISRAEL
Israeli soldiers have clashed with some 150 Palestinians trying to block Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. Palestinians have tried several times to set up encampments to stop expansion in recent weeks.
Soldiers used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters and remove about a dozen tents and small huts from the al-Manatir camp near the West Bank village of Burin Saturday, witnesses and the Army said. No serious injures were reported.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said troops used non-lethal riot dispersal tactics on the Palestinians, who were throwing stones. Settlers and Palestinians were also involved in a stone-throwing clash on a nearby road, on which people from both sides were slightly injured
Going out with South Africa’s flashy young ‘boasters’
By Hamilton Wende
SowetoThe children of many of South Africa’s black middle-class families have no memory of the discrimination and poverty their parents endured under apartheid, and some have taken to roaming the townships in expensive clothes bought at their parents’ expense.
Money gleaming. Crisp, new banknotes being counted in the sunlight on a Soweto street.
Two young teenagers wearing designer jeans, shimmering silk shirts, bright pink and blue shoes and white-straw, narrow-brimmed fedoras are passing a large wad of cash from one to the other.
“There’s not enough,” one says.
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