Six In The Morning

Obama pressed for swift U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) urges president Obama to quickly pull out at least half of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, another sign of Congress’ unease with the conflict.

By Lisa Mascaro, Washington Bureau  

Reporting from Washington– A leading antiwar congresswoman established a new marker in the Afghanistan war debate Friday, calling on President Obama to swiftly withdraw at least 50,000 U.S. troops in a further indication of Congress’ growing unease with the 10-year-old military operation.

The push from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) offers the president a view from the political left as the White House engages in internal deliberations over the scale of the drawdown Obama plans to announce in July. Lee said anything less than a halving of the 100,000 U.S. troop presence would be too modest.

Drought and poachers take Botswana’s natural wonder to brink of catastrophe

Aerial survey reveals some wildlife populations have shrunk by 90% in 15 years

David Smith in Johannesburg  The Guardian, Saturday 18 June 2011  

The Okavango delta in Botswana has suffered “catastrophic” species loss over the past 15 years, researchers have announced , in the latest sign of a growing crisis for wildlife in Africa.

Some wild animal populations in the delta, one of the wonders of the natural world, have shrunk by up to 90% and are facing local extinction, according to the most comprehensive aerial survey yet undertaken there.

The findings come after a study this month showed dramatic declines in animal numbers in the Masai Mara wildlife reserve, south-west Kenya, raising anxiety about the effectiveness of conservation across the continent.

Saudi women take to the road in show of defiance



‘Independent’ correspondent sees her female driver stopped and questioned by police after joining historic day of protest

By Lubna Hussain in Riyadh Saturday, 18 June 2011

“I have some gifts to buy for one of my daughter’s friends,” said Maha Al Qahtani, a Saudi mother of four, and before we knew it we were in the back of her family car, with her husband sitting in the passenger seat.

As we left the car park, we saw some expatriate workers on the side of the street staring at the driver, but she seemed unfazed.

Her husband, Mohammed Al Qahtani, a professor at a university in Riyadh, continuously told her how to negotiate the traffic.

Paris and Berlin unite behind new Greek aid package

The Irish Times – Saturday, June 18, 2011

DEREK SCALLY in Berlin  

FRANCE AND Germany made a show of unity in Berlin yesterday, calling for a second Greek aid package involving voluntary private-sector participation by next month.

Ahead of next week’s EU summit, German chancellor Angela Merkel officially ditched Berlin’s earlier demand for more extensive private-sector involvement, a tacit acknowledgement of warnings from the European Central Bank that this approach could trigger adverse market reaction.

The German proposal had caused alarm in Paris too, given French banks’ considerable exposure in Greece.

News of a Franco-German reconciliation after bilateral talks in Berlin calmed markets, pushed up the euro and triggered a Greek bond rally.

TEPCO documents show problems encountered in venting, pumping water to damaged reactors



2011/06/18  

 Despite the orders of Masao Yoshida, head of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, venting of reactors and injections of water did not proceed smoothly in the early stage of the crisis, documents showed.

Fearing reactor core damage could lead to a serious accident, Yoshida started issuing instructions to prepare pumping in water to the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors around 90 minutes after all power sources to the reactors were lost by 3:40 p.m. on March 11, according to the internal documents of Tokyo Electric Power Co.

His orders were in accordance with procedures prepared to deal with serious accidents. But the work ran into a number of problems, some of them unexplained in the documents.

Deploying New Tools to Stop the Hackers



By CHRISTOPHER DREW and VERNE G. KOPYTOFF

Published: June 17, 2011  

Trying to secure a computer network is much like trying to secure a building – the challenge is trying to screen out real threats without impeding the normal traffic that needs to go in and out.

And as the recent hacking attacks against Citigroup, RSA Security and Lockheed Martin show, even sophisticated security systems can be breached.

“We’re seeing an inflection point where the attackers are extremely smart, and they are using completely new techniques,” said Nir Zuk, the chief technology officer at Palo Alto Networks, a firewall company based in Santa Clara, Calif. “Every piece of content that you receive can attack you.”