Six In The Morning

Haqqani network denies involvement in assassination of Afghan envoy

Commander Sirajuddin Haqqani said the militant outfit didn't kill Burhanuddin Rabbani, killed by a suicide bomber last month

• Declan Walsh in Islamabad
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 October 2011 

The commander of Afghanistan's most notorious militant outfit, the Haqqani network, has denied playing a part in the assassination of President Hamid Karzai's main peace envoy two weeks ago.

"We haven't killed Burhanuddin Rabbani," Sirajuddin Haqqani said in anaudiotape message delivered to the BBC Pashto service, referring to the peace envoy killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul on 20 September.

It was the first public pronouncement by the Haqqanis on an issue that has triggered a fresh war of words between Pakistan and Afghanistan and killed off near-term hopes of starting peace talks to end the conflict.

I was tortured in Bahrain police cell, says one of the doctors jailed for 15 years

Roula al-Saffar tells Patrick Cockburn of electric shocks and threats

Monday, 3 October 2011

As one of 20 Bahraini doctors and nurses given up to 15 years in prison, Dr Roula al-Saffar recalls with outrage the tortures inflicted as police tried to force her and other medical specialists to confess to "a doctors' plot" to overthrow the Bahraini government.

"It was a nightmare," Dr Saffar, the 49-year-old president of the Bahraini Nursing Society, told The Independent in a phone interview from Bahrain, on the day that she had originally been told she would go to prison – a fate that now appears to have been briefly postponed. "They gave me electric shocks and beat me with a cable. They did not let me sleep for three or four days."

Greece to miss deficit target

irishtimes.com - Last Updated: Monday, October 3, 2011

Greece is likely to miss a deficit target set as part of July's bailout package, casting doubt over the country's ability to avert bankruptcy.

Inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, EU and European Central Bank, known as the troika, are in Athens scouring the country's books to decide whether to approve a loan tranche. Without that installment, Greece would run out of cash as soon as this month.

The 2012 draft budget approved by cabinet yesterday predicts a deficit of 8.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) for 2011, well short of the 7.6 per cent target.

Only the Poor Are Left'

Civilians Abandon Sirte ahead of Rebel Onslaught

By Thilo Thielke in Sirte, Libya 

The two tanks crawl up the small hill, followed by whooping teenagers dragging bazookas and assault rifles. When they have reached the top, the valley stretches out below them, a vast shimmering expanse of parched palm trees and sand. A fortress-like building surrounded by a white wall is visible on the horizon. It looks like a fort, located about three kilometers (two miles) away on the outskirts of Sirte.

The tanks turn their barrels in that direction. There are two loud noises, and the earth shakes. "Allahu akbar," the rebels shout. "God is great." Then they take cover.

The Libyan city of Sirte, located between Bani Walid and Sabha, is one of ousted dictator Moammar Gadhafi's last bastions. His son Mutassim is reportedly in charge of the resistance against the rebels there, while the dictator is believed to be hiding near Libya's border with Tunisia and Algeria, protected by paid Tuareg tribesmen.

Myanmar buys time with dam block By Simon Roughneen  BANGKOK - China has reacted coolly to Myanmar's surprise suspension of a controversial US$3.6 billion hydropower dam project it backed in the country's war-torn Kachin state. Hitherto cautious observers have greeted the stoppage as the first tangible reform move undertaken by the Myanmar's six-month-old, nominally civilian government led by former general Thein Sein.  According to the government, work on the controversial Myitsone dam will be suspended "according to the desire of the people". The announcement followed an upsurge in popular opposition to the project, where certain members of the old military elite and Aung San Suu Kyi-led political opposition found rare common cause. The project threatened the headwaters of the Irrawaddy River, the cradle of Burmese civilization.  Proposed Keystone XL oil project draws a divisive line At hearings along the pipeline's route from Montana to Texas, traditional political bases are at each other's throats. By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times October 3, 2011 Some might have been surprised to hear that plans to build a 1,700-mile oil pipeline through the Midwest to the Gulf Coast — a source of new oil and thousands of jobs — would drive an emotional fault line down the middle of the conservative heartland. But any skepticism would have quickly evaporated here in the noisy bleachers of the West Holt High School gymnasium. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline — the subject of public hearings convened by the State Department last week along the route from Montana to Texas — was alternately described as a plot by a foreign corporation to exploit America, a potentially perilous polluter of the nation's greatest freshwater resource, the answer to America's energy insecurity, a generator of the last great family-wage jobs and, oh yes, a dangerous new instigator of global warming.