Six In The Morning

Birth of a Palestinian City Is Punctuated by Struggles

By ISABEL KERSHNER

Published: August 10, 2013

RAWABI, West Bank – Two students came up with Rawabi, the Arabic word for hills, in a competition to name this new Palestinian city, the first to have been planned from the ground up. The developers rejected suggestions – like Arafat City and Jihad City – that evoked a more chaotic past.

“The new generation is building this city,” said Bashar Masri, 52, the Palestinian businessman who has headed this ambitious project and says he will be moving into a duplex penthouse in the town center once it is completed.

“Every Palestinian has a duty to participate in nation building,” he told reporters on a tour of the site last week.

Strange tale of Shell’s pipeline battle, the Garda and £30,000 worth of booze

Shell’s Corrib gas project has been delayed for years by strong resistance in County Mayo. Now claims are emerging of corporate sweeteners, including a consignment of alcohol for police after a clash with protesters

Ed Vulliamy

The Observer, Sunday 11 August 2013

For 10 years, the Shell oil and gas behemoth has endeavoured to bring ashore a pipeline from the Atlantic into the heart-stopping beauty of Ireland’s County Mayo seaboard. And for 10 years, local people whose ancestors farmed the land and fished the ocean have been determined to stop it.

The struggle has become an epic clash between the Goliath that is Shell, backed by the Irish police, and a group assembled around the umbrella protest group Shell to Sea, whose founder, retired primary schoolteacher Maura Harrington, says that, “thanks in no small measure to the Shell to Sea campaign, the project is 10 years behind schedule and its budget has trebled”.

The innocents caught under the drones: For fearful Yemenis the US and al-Qa’ida look very similar

 

FAREA AL-MUSLIMI  SANA’A  SUNDAY 11 AUGUST 2013

I have encountered two separate Yemens this past week: the one portrayed in Western media outlets and the other reality of living in Sana’a. One was rife with conflict and insecurity, the other associated with the navigation of the capital’s gridlocked traffic. Yet the two Yemens collided in a visceral way for most people.

The al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) plot, described vaguely by President Obama as a “threat stream”, and the subsequent US embassy closure in Sana’a were far from the minds of most Yemenis. Most were more preoccupied with the approaching conclusion of Ramadan, the Eid al-Fitr celebrations and the political direction of the nation, most notably the United Nations-backed National Dialogue Conference, which aims at drafting a new constitution before elections in February.

Keita and Cisse face off in Mali presidential election runoff

MALI

Two candidates made large gains in Mali’s July 28 polls, but neither won a majority. Polls are now set to re-open in a runoff vote Malians hope will produce a president who can lead the country away from turmoil.

The ballot in Sunday’s presidential election sharply reduces Malian voters’ choice from the original 27 candidates to only two frontrunners: Mali’s former prime minister, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (pictured above, left), and former finance minister, Soumaila Cisse (pictured above, right).

Ex-Prime Minister Keita is favored to win in the runoff vote on Sunday. Not only did he capture roughly 40 percent of the vote late last month, but he has also gained the backing of Mali’s religious leaders and military.

Manila apologizes, and Taiwan lifts sanctions

The shooting of a fisherman in disputed waters triggered a rare – and costly – three-month spat between the two Asian democracies.

 By Ralph Jennings, Correspondent

Taiwan has lifted punitive sanctions against the Philippines after a sudden apology from Manila, ending an unusual and economically damaging spat between two Pacific Rim neighbors that the United States counts as strategic allies.

Relations between the two Asian democracies are returning to their state before May 9, when the Philippine coast guard shot a Taiwanese fisherman to death in overlapping waters of the Luzon Strait between the two sides.

Outraged by Manila’s defensive initial response to the shooting,Taipei quickly approved eight sanctions that hit the impoverished country’s economy and rippled into two-way trade worth nearly $11 billion last year. Taiwan also suspended most bilateral exchanges.

Mystery surrounds Egyptian sphinx unearthed in Israel

 

(CNN)  

Tel Hazor in northern Israel has long been a treasure trove for archeologists, but a recent discovery of part of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian sphinx has been a most unexpected find.

Inexplicably buried far from Egypt, the paws of a sphinx statue, resting on its base, have been unearthed with an inscription in hieroglyphs naming King Mycerinus. The pharaoh ruled in 2500 BC and oversaw the construction of one of the three Giza pyramids, where he was enshrined.

“Once in a lifetime you find something like this,” says Amnon Ben-Tor, the director of the excavation and a professor at Hebrew University, which sponsors the archeological digging.