Erstellt am: 21. 2. 2012 - 15:15 Uhr

Yemen's one-horse race

Reality Check: Presidential election in Yemen, Tibetan new year, Greece's military spending, Kurdish attacks on Turkish newspaper, yoga and wealth.

Vice president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is to take over from Ali Abdullah Saleh in an election in which he is the only candidate. The election is not strictly legal (it's against the Yemeni constitution for there to be only one candidate in a presidential election) and Hadi has ruled the country anyway since November, when Saleh stood down in the face of
growing protests. Hadi is not a reformer, in fact he is very much part of the old establishment, and no one is expecting there to be much change under his leadership - so why are the international community and Yemenis alike welcoming this latest development?

According to analyst, Shashank Joshi, it's all about stability. The US and Saudis are happy that he will continue to cooperate on matters such as anti-terrorism, and the Yemenis are clinging to the hope that Hadi will keep his promise and implement multi-party elections within 2 years. However, Shashank is sceptical. He says that Hadi may not find it advantageous to keep his promise, and that Yemen may find itself in a similar situation to Egypt, only possibly worse.

• Tibetan New Year

Some Tibetans are refusing the celebrate their New Year as a part of an anti-China protest. It may sound a strange sort of boycott, but the intent is to prevent the Chinese authorities from using the Tibetan New Year as a PR exercise, to show how happy Tibetans are under Chinese rule. Chris Cummins looks at the Tibetan protest movement and the developments over recent months.

• Greece and military spending

Despite its economic woes, Greece has been encouraged by France and Germany to spend massive amounts on military equipment. Thanos Dokos, the director general of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, tells Elizabeth Alcock why the Greeks feel they need to spend so much on defence.

• Office of Turkish newspaper attacked

The Paris and Cologne offices of the Turkish language newspaper "Zaman" have been attacked by supporters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Steven Ellis of the International Press Institute tells Riem Higazi the attacks are just the latest in a series of incidents at Zaman offices all over Europe.

• Financial wellbeing - meditating money to you

Jacqueline Richards tells Riem Higazi how she combines yoga with financial advice.

She says yoga can improve your economic wellbeing, as well as your physical and mental state.

FM4 Reality Check

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