Six In The Morning

Freed Tymoshenko addresses Ukraine protesters

 Former prime minister tells crowds in Kiev to stay in central square as parliament impeaches President Yanukovich.

 Last updated: 23 Feb 2014 07:48

Hours after her release from prison, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has appeared before protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square, praising the demonstrators killed in violence this week and urging the crowds to keep occupying the square

Tymoshenko’s speech to about 50,000 people, made from a wheelchair because of the severe back problems she suffered in two and a half years of imprisonment, was the latest development in the country’s fast-moving political crisis, the AP news agency reported.

Tymoshenko, who appeared close to exhaustion, said: “You are heroes, you are the best thing in Ukraine!

“In no case do you have the right to leave the Maidan [Independence Square] until you have concluded everything that you planned to do.”

Earlier on Saturday, parliament voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovich from office, hours after he abandoned his Kiev office to protesters and denounced what he described as a coup.

The French Intifada: how the Arab banlieues are fighting the French state

 The secular republican world of France, the Muslim world of North Africa: how the bitter history of France’s relationship with its ex-colonies is played out in the French capital is the subject of a fascinating new book, extracted below

Andrew Hussey

The Observer, Sunday 23 February 2014

In the late afternoon of 27 March 2007, I was travelling on the Paris metro, heading home after a day’s work in the east end of the city. I got off at the Gare du Nord to change trains. In a trance – lost in the music on my headphones – I automatically made for the shopping mall which connects the upper and lower levels of the station. This was where I would normally buy a newspaper and a coffee and then catch a train south to my flat.

But this was no ordinary evening. As I walked up the exit stairs I could smell smoke and hear shouting. The corridors were a tighter squeeze than usual and everyone a little more nervous and bad-tempered than the average rush-hour crowd. As I got nearer the main piazza of the mall, smoke stung my eyes and nostrils, and the shouting grew louder. I could see armed police and dogs. Still, there didn’t seem to be too much to worry about. My only real fear was how to get through the tide of commuters, which by now had come to a dead halt, and on to my train home.

‘No one cares’: The tragic truth of Syria’s 500,000 refuge children

At least a million Syrian refugees are now living in Lebanon, almost half of them children. They are being put up in tents, shacks and nine to a room – but ‘no one cares’, says British photographer Ed Thompson, who spent six days moving among the camps

SARAH MORRISON  Author Biography   Sunday 23 February 2014

When the British photojournalist Ed Thompson arrived at a snowy Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon last December, he was greeted by a little boy who ran circles around him, making motorbike sounds. Thompson joined in and the subject of his new project was born.

We do not know the name of the boy, or his story. That is partly because Thompson did not make the trip to Lebanon with an NGO or the UN. His visit was instigated by a chance encounter with Sammy Hamze, a 20-year-old Lebanese art student studying in London. They got talking in the pub about the number of Syrians living in Hamze’s hometown and, within weeks, were in Lebanon, cameras and notepads in hand.

They spent six days in Chhim, western Lebanon, interviewing refugees in camps, those taken in by Lebanese families and those forced to pay steep rent for squalid properties. Keen to break through the political soundbites – lamenting Syria as the “greatest humanitarian tragedy of our times” – Thompson wanted to personalise the crisis and draw attention to two startling statistics: that of the nearly one million (official) Syrian refugees displaced in Lebanon, almost half are children; and around one in five, according to Unicef, are less than five years old.

Thousands of kids lost parents in South Sudan fighting

When the shooting began, Ajing Abiik and his two younger brothers ran for their lives.

 Sapa -AP

The shy 12-year-old with the serious expression is now among 90,000 people in one of South Sudan’s largest camps of people who have been displaced since war broke out in December.

Their father was a soldier and died in fighting months ago. Now the three boys don’t know where their mother is – or even if she is still alive.

Abiik and his brothers are far from alone.

Thousands of other children in South Sudan have been separated from their families when the fled cities and villages in panic as indiscriminate gunfire cut down soldiers and civilians alike.

The fighting in the world’s newest country has left many of its youngest citizens either orphans or separated from their parents, increasing their vulnerability to sickness, malnutrition and recruitment by warring groups as child soldiers.

The legend of ‘El Chapo’: Cartel chief cultivated Robin Hood image



 By Catherine E. Shoichet and Mariano Castillo, CNN

February 23, 2014 — Updated 0000 GMT

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman eluded arrest for so long that the stories about him veered closer and closer to the stuff of legend.

So powerful is he, people said, that he can bribe anyone. He commands so much loyalty, the story goes, that he is always tipped off when the heat is close. He’s so fearless that he can live his life without concern of being caught.

Of course, now we know his influence has its limits.

Guzman was arrested overnight in a hotel in the Pacific beach town of Mazatlan, in his home state of Sinaloa.

He had been on the lam since escaping from prison in 2001, and no one — that we know of — came close to catching the drug lord who regularly appears on Forbes magazine list of most powerful people.

Girl killed, dozens hurt in attack on Thai protest

 

 By JINDA WEDEL

BANGKOK (AP) – Gunmen in a pickup truck attacked an anti-government protest in Thailand’s east, killing at least one person, a child, and wounding dozens, as violence in the country’s 3-month-old political crisis spread outside the capital, Bangkok, officials said Sunday.

The attack took place Saturday night in Trat province, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) east of Bangkok, where about 500 protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra were holding a rally near food stalls where people were dining.

Thai media reported that as many as three people were killed and several others are in critical condition, but National Security Council chief Lt. Gen. Paradorn Pattanathuabutr said there had been one fatality – an 8-year-old girl. A nurse at Trat Hospital, Nantiya Thientawatchai, told The Associated Press that the girl who died was 5 years old. The reason for the discrepancy was not clear.