Six In The Morning

MH370: Plane search signal ‘important lead’

 6 April 2014 Last updated at 06:46

  The BBC

Australian co-ordinators in the search for a missing Malaysian plane say a Chinese ship has detected a pulse signal for a second time, within hours of it being heard earlier on Saturday.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston called the discovery in the southern Indian Ocean an “important and encouraging lead”.

He warned that the data were still unverified.

British naval ship HMS Echo is sailing to the area to investigate further.

It is expected to arrive in the early hours of Monday.

Australian aircraft were also on their way, Air Chief Marshal Houston told reporters. Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield would be heading to the latest search area once it had investigated a third acoustic detection elsewhere.

Both HMS Echo and ADV Ocean Shield have technology able to detect underwater signals emitted by data recorders.

Syrian refugees: The singular stories of the millions on the move

 Khaled Hosseini, author of ‘The Kite Runner’ and a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, visits a Syrian refugee camp in Kurdish Iraq and is moved by families desperate to provide for themselves and not to be reliant on the generosity of local people

KHALED HOSSEINI   Sunday 06 April 2014

In the Kurdish region of Iraq, I sit atop a hill green with grass. It is late in the day and the sun nudges low against the horizon. Arabic and Kurdish pop songs, rich with danceable grooves, blare all around me, layer on jovial layer.

Three days ago I had a list of statistics in my head. Now, as I look out over a sea of white tents, the numbers take on new meaning. They breathe. They become fully realised souls.

Two and a half million Syrian refugees: a woman, cradling her prematurely born baby, sips black coffee and looks down at her daughter’s crayon drawings.

Five and a half million children inside Syria and in neighbouring countries affected by the war: my own private cliché, the shadow of a young boy running and flying his kite passes over me.

Indonesians vote one for incongruity

April 5, 2014

Michael Bachelard

Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax Media

One-time nude model, polygamist and horror movie actress turned parliamentary candidate Angel Lelga smiles fetchingly for the camera as a succession of poor women move in to be photographed in her orbit.

They are standing on the verandah of a village house in Central Java, and Angel’s immaculate make-up, pink Chanel slip-ons and high-fashion headscarf are incongruous among the chickens and dust of the rice belt.

Indonesia’s parliamentary election is in full swing before the vote next Wednesday and campaign season makes for some odd sights. But the incongruities in Angel’s candidacy do not end there – this celebrity entertainer with a past that is anything but orthodox is running for a conservative Muslim political party.

Pussy Riot members: Why they want to reform Russian prisons

Pussy Riot members were cleared of inciting religious hatred Friday by a Russian court. At the same time, Pussy Riot members were speaking out in New York on prisoners’ rights.

By Jason Bush, Reuters

Two women from Russia’s Pussy Riot protest group who were jailed for a song deriding President Vladimir Putin were cleared in a Moscow court on Friday of inciting religious hatred. At the same time, Pussy RIot members were speaking out for prisoners’ rights in New York.  

The Russian court knocked only one month off their two-year sentences, upholding a charge of hooliganism.

Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova spent nearly two years in prison after performing a protest song against Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral in 2012.

Many in the West criticized the harshness of the sentence, saying it was evidence of a clamp-down on dissent.

Kagame accuses France of ‘participating’ in Rwandan genocide

 In an interview to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1994 genocide, Paul Kagame has criticised France for its “direct role” in the mass killings.

05 APR 2014 16:36 AFP

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has once again accused France of “participating” in the 1994 genocide in an interview to mark the 20th anniversary of the mass killings.

Speaking to the weekly Jeune Afrique, Kagame denounced the “direct role of Belgium and France in the political preparation for the genocide”.

He also accused French soldiers who took part in a military humanitarian mission in the south of the former Belgian colony of being both accomplices and “actors” in the bloodbath.

The interview was to be published on Sunday as Rwanda prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the atrocities that claimed at least 800 000 lives, mainly of minority Tutsis.

Immigration Advocates Rally to Curb Deportations



 BY SUZANNE GAMBOA

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Protesters marched to the White House Saturday with signs labeling President Barack Obama “Deporter In Chief” to pressure him to curb deportations of immigrants.

The protesters walked for about an hour from a park in the district’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood to a park flanking the White House. It was one of several marches staged Saturday by groups hoping to force the president to use his powers to halt deportations of non-criminal immigrants.

“We are bringing the human suffering to the doorstep,” said Marisa Franco, an organizer of the Ni Una Mas Deportación (Not One More Deportation) campaign of the National Day Labor Organizing Network.