UN worker says evacuation of 200 employees follows repeated attacks on its Abidjan offices by pro-Gbagbo forces The United Nations mission in Ivory Coast has begun evacuating some 200 employees after frequent attacks on its headquarters by forces loyal to the country’s incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo. A UN employee said they had been told today that they were leaving, and had been taken by helicopter from their base in Abidjan to the airport. They expected to be evacuated initially to the northern city of Bouake. The source asked not to be named because UN employees are not authorised to speak to the press. The evacuation order is for all “essential employees.” Non-essential workers were evacuated several months ago. The UN still has a military presence in Ivory Coast, and French forces secured Abidjan airport yesterday. Gbagbo’s elected successor, Alassane Ouattara, has meantime rejected UN charges that his forces were involved in a massacre of hundreds of civilians . The UN mission (ONUCI) said yesterday that traditional hunters known as Dozos fought alongside Ouattara’s forces and took part in the killing of 330 people in the western town of Duékoué. Troops loyal to Ouattara, the widely recognised winner of last November’s election, launched an offensive early this week to dislodge Gbagbo after his continued refusal to accept the result of the UN-certified poll. The International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday that at least 800 people had been killed in intercommunal violence in Duékoué this week. It was not clear whether the 330 counted by ONUCI was included in that figure. The UN said its secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, had spoken to Ouattara, who told him his forces were not involved in the Duékoué killings. Speaking on France24 television, Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy head of UNOCI’s human rights division, blamed 220 of the deaths on pro-Ouattara forces. He said the killings happened between Monday and Wednesday as pro-Ouattara troops advanced southward. He said pro-Gbagbo militia fighters killed more than 110 poeple. “[Ouattara] government notes with regret that the allegations of the deputy chief of ONUCI human rights division are not supported by any evidence after its preliminary investigation,” his administration said in a statement. It also denied that Dozos made up part of its forces. After quickly taking control of swathes of the country, pro-Ouattara forces have met fierce resistance over the past three days. Troops loyal to Gbagbo have held on to positions around the presidential palace in Abidjan, Gbagbo’s residence, and state television headquarters. In Paris, the French defence ministry said French troops had taken control of Abidjan’s airport and that the country planned to send an additional 300 troops to Ivory Coast. After a day and night of intense fighting, Abidjan was calm this morning with sporadic gunfire, residents said. Heavy canon fire and shooting were heard overnight in the pro-Gbagbo neighbourhood of Yopougon and also in Cocody, they added. More than 1,300 people have been killed so far in the post-election violence. The Catholic charity Caritas said in a statement that teams visiting Duékoué reported that a thousand people had been killed or “disappeared”. Ivory Coast United Nations guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Is Addiction To Risk Keeping Us From An Honest Discussion Of Climate Change & Solutions?
April 3, 2011 No Comment(19:05 minutes long) Naomi Klein spoke in December of last year (prior to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan) to a TED conference for women and posed what I thought was an interesting question: What makes our culture so prone to the reckless high-stakes gamble that we are unwilling to act now to deal with climate change? It’s true, it does seem to be part of the American psyche that somehow, things will get fixed at the last minute. Our pop culture references the defusing of the bomb with seconds to spare in all mediums. Even the most apocalyptic among us holds on to the notion of the last minute saving from destruction. But nature doesn’t work that way. There are no quick and easy solutions and the gamble we’re taking waiting for one is only making that potential loss that much bigger. Klein moves into the gender differences in risk assessment and tolerance and while it resonates with me on a personal level, I don’t know if it works on a national or global scale. Perhaps if there was more gender parity in leadership, we would be able to have a decent sampling from which to compare. I see far more hubris and inertia in our response (or lack thereof) to global warming than I do addiction to risk, but Klein does present an interesting point of view that certainly makes me want to think more about it. Are we too addicted to risk to take measures to protect us from disaster? What do you think?
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The Washington Post obviously doesn't observe the idea that Sunday is the Lord's Day. It's apparently the Atheist's Day. The
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• Bash F5 or use our auto-refresher for the latest updates • Click here for today’s other latest scores • Send your thoughts to john.ashdown@guardian.co.uk • Or get in touch via Twitter First things first, then . Is this the worst thing ever seen at a football ground? Hang on, let me rephrase that: this is the worst thing ever seen at a football ground. To the general outrage of all right-minded Fulham fans, and the hilarity of everyone else, Mohammad Al-Fayed unveiled his statue of Michael Jackson outside Craven Cottage this afternoon. Look at it. You might, might , get away with it, if you produce something vaguely classy and understated, perhaps something in burnished bronze or marble. But this embarrassing full colour Play-doh sculpted, Madame Tussauds reject? Really? You have to feel sorry for Fulham fans, you really do. And Fayed, having unveiled this monstrosity, further endeared himself to the home faithful: “Why is it bizarre? Football fans love it,” he gibbered. “If some stupid fans don’t understand and appreciate such a gift they can go to hell. I don’t want them to be fans. If they don’t understand and don’t believe in things I believe in they can go to Chelsea, they can go to anywhere else.” So, Fulham fans, your chairman says if you don’t like this unspeakably tacky, gobsmackingly cheap, eyewateringly ugly, teeth-gratingly embarrassing, utterly, utterly awful monument to a ‘controversial’ pop star whose private life means the word controversial has to be placed in inverted commas before his description as a pop star and who has as much to do with Fulham Football Club as the Teletubbies have to do with the Denver Broncos, then you can do one down the road to Stamford Bridge. Nice one Chairman Mo. Nice one. Premier League Fulham Blackpool John Ashdown guardian.co.uk
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Northern Ireland chief constable calls Ronan Kerr, 25, a ‘modern-day hero’ and says his death is a ‘tragedy for Omagh’ The head of Northern Ireland’s police force has described the death of a police constable killed in a car bomb as a “tragedy for Omagh” and paid tribute to the 25-year-old officer. Constable Ronan Kerr died after setting off the bomb, which had been hidden underneath his car, as he left home for work on Saturday. Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Chief Constable Matt Baggott said: “Tragedy has returned to Omagh with the loss of constable Ronan Kerr.” In 1998, a car bomb killed 29 people in Omagh, one of the worst atrocities carried out by paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. He added: “Ronan was relatively new to the Police Service of Northern Ireland but had proven himself a good and dedicated officer in the short time he was with us. He had joined the police because he was willing to stand up and serve his community. No words could adequately describe the shock and sense of loss being felt by his colleagues and the residents of Omagh.” Kerr, a Catholic, only graduated from police training college three weeks ago. Baggot said his “abhorrence and anger” at the waste of Kerr’s life was shared by people in Omagh and across Northern Ireland and beyond. He also called Kerr “a modern-day hero”. Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuiness, deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and former IRA commander, also condemned the killing and described Kerr as “someone who was prepared to give so much has now given their life in belief of the peace process”. Kerr is the second policeman to have been killed since the PSNI was formed in 2001. Baggott said: “The PSNI has some of the bravest men and women in the world among its number … who put on their uniform and selflessly go out and do their duty for their community despite the ever present threat from misguided terrorist criminals”. Pat Noma, a friend of Kerr’s mother Nuala, said she had recently been widowed and had depended on Kerr, an only child, for support. “I’m calling on all the mothers in Omagh to come out on her behalf. We’ve got to find these people; we’ve got to stop them from doing this,” she said. “Nobody in Omagh wants this to happen and we’ve got to call everybody together to hand them over. We can’t tolerate this. Omagh has suffered enough.” The killing is thought to have been carried out by dissident republicans but no group has yet claimed responsibility for the murder. Northern Ireland UK security and terrorism Omagh bombing Northern Irish politics Jo Adetunji Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk
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With a mother from Ghana and a father from Sierra Leone, Idris Elba was brought up in east London before finding fame in America. As he takes his place in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, we send Afua Hirsch, half-Ghanaian herself, to unpick this most modern of British actors Idris Elba wants to know, on a scale of one to 10, how intimidating I find him in person. “Do you think I’m terrifying?” he asks. “I
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Southwest Airlines grounds 80 Boeing 737-300s after Flight 812 develops 6ft hole in fuselage mid-flight A “gunshot-like sound” woke Brenda Reese as her Southwest Airlines flight cruised at 36,000ft (11,000m). Looking up, she could see the sky through a hole torn in the cabin roof. The Boeing 737 lost cabin pressure after the hole appeared on Friday, prompting frightened passengers to grope for oxygen masks as the plane made a terrifying but controlled descent. One passenger called it “pandemonium”. Another watched as a flight attendant and another passenger passed out, apparently for lack of oxygen, their heads striking seats in front of them. Officials said Flight 812 lost pressure because of a fuselage rupture. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the pilot made a “controlled descent from 36,000ft to 11,000ft (3,350m) altitude”. His safe emergency landing at a military base in Yuma, about 240km south-west of Phoenix, drew applause from relieved passengers. No serious injuries were reported among the 118 people aboard although a flight attendant was slightly hurt, according to Southwest officials. The cause of the hole was not immediately known. The FBI called it a “mechanical failure”, not an act of terror or other foul play. The plane is a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 . Southwest officials said they would pull about 80 similar planes out of service for inspections of the fuselage, forcing the airline to plan to cancel roughly 300 flights on Saturday. Southwest officials said the Arizona plane had undergone all inspections required by the FAA, but they did not immediately provide the date of the last inspection. The 737-300 is the oldest plane in Southwest’s fleet, and the company is retiring 300s as it takes deliveries of new Boeing 737-700s and, beginning next year, 737-800s. But the process of replacing all the 300s could take years. Reese said the plane had just left Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport for Sacramento, California, when the “gunshot-like sound” woke her up. She said oxygen masks dropped as the plane dove. Seated one row from the rupture, Don Nelson said it took about four noisy minutes for the plane to dip to less than 10,000ft(3,000m). “You could tell there was an oxygen deficiency,” he said. Reese described the hole as “at the top of the plane, right up above where you store your luggage”. “The panel’s not completely off,” she told the Associated Press. “It’s like ripped down, but you can see completely outside… When you look up through the panel, you can see the sky.” Mobile phone photographs provided by Reese showed a panel hanging open in a section above the plane’s middle aisle, with a hole about 6ft (1.8m) long. The National Transportation Safety Board said an ” in-flight fuselage rupture ” led to the drop in cabin pressure aboard the plane. A similar incident happened in July 2009 when a football-sized hole opened up in flight in the fuselage of another Southwest 737, depressurising the cabin. The plane made an emergency landing in Charleston, West Virginia. It was later determined that the hole was caused by metal fatigue. Reese said passengers applauded the pilot after he emerged from the cockpit following the emergency landing in Yuma. “I fly a lot. This is the first time I ever had something like this happen,” said Reese, a 37-year-old single mother of three who is vice president for a clinical research organization. “I just want to get home and hold my kids.” Air transport Airline industry United States guardian.co.uk
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