Six In The Morning

Al-Qaida eyed oil tankers as bombing targets
Bin Laden documents show the idea had reached group's upper echelons
By EILEEN SULLIVAN, MATT APUZZO
Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.
The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars.

Spain protesters defy ban to remain in Madrid square
Some 25,000 Spanish protesters have defied a government ban and camped out overnight in a square in the capital, Madrid.

The protesters are angry with the government's economic policies and have occupied the area for the past week.

Spain's electoral commission had ordered them to leave ahead of local elections on Sunday.

But as the ban came into effect at midnight, the crowds started cheering and police did not move in.

The protest began six days ago in Madrid's Puerta del Sol as a spontaneous sit-in by young Spaniards frustrated at 45% youth unemployment.

Pulling their punches: How Bolivia’s street-fighting women became a sporting sensation
They started out as a novelty act. Now Bolivia's female wrestlers are a sporting phenomenon – with a cultural message
By Peter Popham Saturday, 21 May 2011
Her visiting card reads "Carmen Rosa: elegance and distinction in la lucha libre – freestyle wrestling". And in her frilly petticoats, layered skirts, dainty pumps and bowler hat, the claim is no exaggeration. In the ring in El Alto, a high, freezing-cold suburb of the Bolivian capital La Paz, Carmen and her colleagues have no contenders for the title of the world's best-dressed wrestlers.

Las cholitas, as Bolivia's indigenous women are called, are relatively new to the fighting ring. Most of them come from families where the men are fighters, and when women's wrestling was first introduced in 2001, it was a commercial gimmick intended to pull in bigger crowds.

Values of revolution must be utilised, says Egyptian writer
The Irish Times - Saturday, May 21, 2011
IAN BLACK in Cairo
ON JANUARY 28th, a young Egyptian man urged the novelist Alaa al-Aswany to write a book about the revolution then gathering momentum in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. minutes after their brief conversation, the protester was shot dead by a government sniper from a nearby roof.

Such killings, along with the bravery of revolutionaries motivated by “a profound sense of injustice”, are seared into the memory of Egypt’s most celebrated living writer, as is clear when he articulates his feelings about the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and what it means.

China's rich fly in the face of the law as they take to the skies

Michael Wines May 21, 2011
WENZHOU: In the nouveau-riche heart of entrepreneurial China, the latest sign that one has really made it is not a Mercedes-Benz, or even a Bentley. It is a helicopter. Perhaps 10 of Wenzhou's super-rich have one. Guan Hongsheng has three.

''For us, a work week is 80 hours or more. So you know what we need? Fast,'' said Mr Guan, a yacht-sailing titan who made a fortune as a trader.

If only it were legal.

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Mr Guan and his friends are black flyers - part of a minuscule group of wealthy Chinese who fly, quite literally, in the face of the law.

Time for Libya to tell the truth about Hammerl

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - May 21 2011
The 41-year-old photographer's death was confirmed on Thursday by journalists who saw him shot and killed by government forces on April 5. The journalists had been held by Libyan forces since the shooting but only made the news of his death public upon their release.

"Libyan government forces killed Anton Hammerl six weeks ago and then lied about what happened," Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch said. "They had his passport and they knew he was dead. Now they should at least release his body and provide some truthful answers about his fate."