Six In The Morning

Egypt's National Democratic party members can stand for office, says supreme court

Members of Hosni Mubarak's defunct former ruling party had been barred by a lower court 

• Jack Shenker
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 November 2011

Members of Hosni Mubarak's dismantled ruling party will be able to stand for office in the Egyptian elections, after the country's supreme court delivered a crucial verdict in their favour.

Today's decision follows months of wrangling over the issue, and overturns a lower court ruling that would have seen the remnants of the old regime barred from running as candidates.

Mubarak's National Democratic party (NDP) dominated all areas of political life under his dictatorship before being dissolved in April this year after a national uprising that toppled the president.

Death in a Russian prison cell: Britain's shameful silence

One minute Sergei Magnitsky was investigating tax fraud. The next he was dead. A coincidence? No, the businessman campaigning for the truth tells Jerome Taylor

JEROME TAYLOR WEDNESDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2011

Two years ago today the body of a father of two from Moscow was found face down in a prison isolation cell where he had languished in squalid conditions for more than 11 months. Every year hundreds of people die inside Russian prisons and most go unreported.

But the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer hired by a British firm to investigate a multimillion-dollar tax scam, lit a fire that has rallied those seeking to end the culture of corruption and impunity among Russian government officials and has caused diplomatic rifts that have reverberated around the world.

Whose finger on Pakistan's nuclear trigger?

By Amir Mir 

ISLAMABAD - While the United States has officially refuted recent international media reports questioning Pakistan's nuclear safety mechanisms, saying that its security measures are state-of-the-art, it is the country's all-powerful army leaders who will have the final say in the use of nuclear weapons if it ever came to that. 

This is despite the fact that in theory the prime minister's finger should be on the nuclear trigger as chairman of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) that handles the command and control of strategic nuclear forces and organizations. 

Fresh controversy over the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons was set off with an article in the December 2011 issue of a leading US magazine, The Atlantic.

Ai Weiwei hands over $1.3m for tax appeal

November 17, 2011

BEIJING: Ai Weiwei has handed 8.45 million yuan ($1.3 million) in donations from his supporters to the Chinese authorities to clear the way for an appeal against a huge tax bill, a lawyer for the artist and activist says.

Ai, 54, had been given until yesterday to settle a 15 million yuan bill for alleged unpaid taxes levied against a company he has links to after he was released from 81 days in secret police detention earlier this year.

Somali rebels vow to defeat Kenya as attacks rock Mogadishu

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA - Nov 16 2011 

The warning, from Sheikh Ali Mohammed Rage, spokesperson for al-Shabaab rebels, came a month after Kenyan troops crossed into southern Somalia.

"We are telling Kenya that they still have the opportunity to back away from the hellfire it was dragged into and leave our soil, otherwise they will continue suffering," Rage said.

The al-Qaeda-linked fighters said they had fought back Kenyan troops on Tuesday during battles in southern Somalia's Lower Juba region.

How a grandmother and aspiring nun became Nicaragua's top cop

National Police Chief Aminta Granera, who once trained to be a Catholic nun, is Nicaragua's most popular public figure, thanks in part to her department's success in fighting organized crime.

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers / November 16, 2011


Even as drug gangs are taking control of wide swaths of other Central American countries, a gentle and unassuming 60-year-old grandmother appears to have held them off as national police chief of Nicaragua.

Opinion polls routinely find that Chief Aminta Granera, who once trained to be a Catholic nun, is the country's most popular public figure, by a big margin, and her numbers in the battle against organized crime are just as impressive: In the five years that she's been chief, police under her command have seized 50 tons of cocaine, $25 million in cash, 1,200 weapons, 1,400 vehicles, 180 boats, 18 aircraft, and 128 properties.

Many of her countrymen view Ms. Granera as honest, fair and incorruptible – qualities sometimes seen in short supply among security officials in the region.