Six In The Morning

More bodies recovered from S Korea ferry

 Divers find 13 more bodies from sunken South Korean ferry, bringing the death toll to 54, while 266 remain missing.

  Last updated: 20 Apr 2014 04:55

Divers have recovered 13 more bodies from inside the ferry that sank off South Korea nearly four days ago, bringing the confirmed death toll to 54.

Officials said on Sunday that the bodies were recovered after divers gained access to the inside of the ferry after three days of failed attempts due to strong currents. Three bodies were pulled out of the fully submerged ferry just before midnight.

Details of how they got inside the ship were not immediately clear, the Associated Press news agency reported.

The ferry, carrying 476 passengers, many of them schoolchildren, capsized on Wednesday on a journey from the port of Incheon to the southern holiday island of Jeju.

Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem find their path to the Via Dolorosa is an ever harder road

 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank say police restrictions on access to the Old City to stop overcrowding are destroying their traditional freedom of worship in Holy Week

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

The Observer, Sunday 20 April 2014

The limestone stairs of the Nuns’ Ascent are glassy-slick from the countless feet that have polished them. Descending steeply, they emerge by the Chapel Sanctuaries of the Flagellation and Condemnation on the Via Dolorosa, the start of the route which – tradition says – Christ took to his crucifixion.

On Good Friday, the stairs were packed with foreign pilgrims walking the Stations of the Cross. Among them is a large party from Serbia carrying crosses, who begin their jostling descent to join the milling crowds below. They slow down to pass an Israeli border police barrier on the stairs, one of a number along the route. It lets them pass without remark.

 Who tried to kill the man who protects the Congo gorillas?



JOSEPH KAVANAGH , ADAM LUSHER   Sunday 20 April 2014

Emmanuel de Merode had driven the road between Goma, the trading hub at the centre of war-torn eastern Congo, and Rumangabo, the headquarters of Virunga national park where he is head warden, hundreds of times. It is a regular supply route for the man who since 2008 has had perhaps the most dangerous job in conservation.

He first arrived in the region at the height of the Congolese civil war. He stayed to work in the spectacular reserve, which is estimated to be home to 80 per cent of the world’s surviving mountain gorillas, even when it was overrun by armed militias. This week, however, his luck ran out. Three gunmen ambushed his vehicle – shooting him five times in the legs and chest.

Prominent TV anchor shot in Pakistan

Hamid Mir, a popular Pakistani television host, has been severely injured after his car came under attack from unidentified gunmen on motorbikes. It is the latest in a wave of attacks on journalists.

DW

Police said Mir was travelling to his office from the airport in the southern city of Karachi when a single gunman opened fire. Others then chased his car along the road on motorbikes.

Mir, who hosts a talk show on the private television network Geo, suffered three gunshot wounds to the stomach and the upper legs, but is expected to survive.

It is the second attempt on the journalist’s life in recent months. Last year a bomb was found planted under his car, but was defused before it could go off.

25 years later, western Germany is still pumping money to the east

Since the Berlin Wall fell, the west has transferred some $1.8 trillion eastward – and counting. Many in other struggling regions think it’s time to reconsider.

By Isabelle de Pommereau, Correspondent

GÖRLITZ, GERMANY

The German city of Görlitz, located in the east on the border with Poland, boasts a revitalized center, boosted by generous federal funds. But it has struggled to build a robust job base or stem a massive exodus of the young.

Almost 400 miles west, Dortmund, located in Germany’s industrial Ruhr valley, is also struggling, hard hit by the decline of the traditional coal and steel industries.

Yet Dortmund regularly channels part of its budget to eastern districts such as Görlitz.

Twenty-five years after the reunification of East and West Germany, western cities and districts continue to contribute funds to the federal budget for the east’s development, under the government’s fiscal equalization plan.

 Survivor recalls how ice tumbled down in Mount Everest avalanche

 

By Manesh Shrestha, CNN

April 20, 2014 — Updated 0259 GMT (1059 HKT)

Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) — Another Sherpa guide has died in Friday’s Mount Everest avalanche, bringing the death toll to 13, a Nepalese government official said Saturday.

It is the single deadliest accident on Mount Everest, officials said. Three others are missing, said Madhu Sudan Burlakoti of Nepal’s Tourism Ministry, and at least half a dozen are injured.

A group of about 50 people, mostly Nepali Sherpas, were hit by the avalanche at more than 20,000 feet, said Tilak Ram Pandey of the ministry’s mountaineering department.

The avalanche took place just above base camp in the Khumbu Ice Fall.