Six In The Morning

U.S. Was Warned on Vents Before Failure at Japan’s Plant



By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: May 18, 2011

WASHINGTON – Five years before the crucial emergency vents at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were disabled by an accident they were supposed to help handle, engineers at a reactor in Minnesota warned American regulators about that very problem.Anthony Sarrack, one of the two engineers, notified staff members at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the design of venting systems was seriously flawed at his reactor and others in the United States similar to the ones in Japan. He later left the industry in frustration because managers and regulators did not agree.

New Yorkers sue China over internet censorship

Eight people accuse China’s biggest search engine firm, Baidu, of conspiring with government to censor pro-democracy content

Reuters

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 May 2011  

Eight New York residents are suing China and its biggest search engine company, accusing Baidu of conspiring with the government to censor pro-democracy content.

The lawsuit claims violations of the US constitution, and according to the plaintiffs’ lawyer, is the first of its type. In an unorthodox move, it names not only a company but also the Chinese government as defendants.

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday, more than a year after Google declared it would no longer censor search results in China, and rerouted internet users to its Hong Kong website.

The ultimate status symbol: How does Unesco whittle down the contenders for the World Heritage list?

Chris Beanland visits Darwin’s Kent home – a future candidate – to find out

Thursday, 19 May 2011

As you survey the rolling Kentish Downs at the point where the garden of Charles Darwin’s former home gently shades into the green hills, you can easily imagine the man himself stood on the same spot, inspired by the natural world around him.

Down House, pictured right, and its gardens have been lovingly restored since being acquired for the nation by English Heritage in 1996. Darwin would recognise every nook.

The birthplace of the theory of evolution is one of a tranche of places hoping to be eventually designated a world heritage site by the United Nations’ cultural division, Unesco.

Autocrats Gain Ground in Middle East

Has the Arab Spring Stalled?

By Alexander Smoltczyk and Volkhard Windfuhr

According to the “Fundamental Law of Revolution,” regimes fall when those at the bottom are fed up with the status quo and those at the top are no longer capable of remaining in power.

That was the experience of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

But difficulties arise when there is one thing those at the top are still quite capable of doing, namely deploying tanks to deal with their opponents — as is the case in Syria and Libya.

Last week, the Syrian regime sent heavy artillery into the rebel city of Dara’a, while its forces attacked protesting students with clubs in the previously calm city of Aleppo, in Banias on the Mediterranean coast and in the northwestern Syrian town of Homs

Swaziland financial reform panned by IMF



MBABANE, SWAZILAND – May 19 2011

“A large fiscal adjustment is needed to bring the programme back on track and reduce the fiscal deficit in line with available financing,” said mission head Joannes Mongardini in a statement at the end of an IMF visit to assess the government’s belt-tightening measures.

Swaziland’s government is teetering on the brink of financial collapse and may run out of money in the next two months. The small Southern African country needs the IMF’s blessing to borrow much-needed cash from the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

It will now have to hope for a favourable IMF assessment in August to access loans totalling more than $100-million.

Why Estonia may be Europe’s model country

The world’s first cyberstate embraced austerity without whining even though its Soviet-era memories are still fresh.

By Isabelle de Pommereau, Correspondent  

An 82-foot-high billboard wrapping Estonia’s finance ministry building in its capital, Tallinn, boasts: “The euro, my money.” It stands just blocks from the city’s cobbled, winding medieval streets and baroque churches, in a downtown where skyscrapers have replaced Russian bunkers, as a symbol of Estonia’s transformation from poor Soviet republic to the European Union’s rising star.

When Estonia was accepted into the eurozone in January, seven years after joining the EU and two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was another big step for the small Baltic nation away from its imposing neighbor to the east, Russia.

Over the next five years, it’s expected to have Europe’s fastest-growing economy. It emerged from the global financial crisis wounded, but has rebounded after adopting austere measures few other countries would accept.