Six In The Morning

European Union summit agreement: the main points

EU leaders' 'fiscal compact' to tackle eurozone debt crisis aims to co-ordinate economic policies with a ceiling on deficits

• Reuters
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 December 2011 

European Union leaders agreed on a new "fiscal compact" to tackle the eurozone's debt crisis on Friday, but failed to win consensus for it to be backed by a new 27-state treaty after Britain held out for safeguards to its financial sector.

Here are the main points of the agreement, reached in the small hours of Friday after overnight talks.

• EU leaders described the deal as based on a new "fiscal compact" and "on significantly stronger co-ordination of economic policies in areas of common interest".

Japanese whaling firm sues US campaigners

Japan's whaling authorities said they are suing campaign group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and its head in the United States in a bid to stop it from interfering in the annual whale hunt.

6:30AM GMT 09 Dec 2011

It is the first time that Japan has attempted legal action abroad against anti-whaling campaigners, who have sometimes used extreme methods against ships involved in the hunt, carried out under rules that allow research whaling.

"Today, Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha and the Institute of Cetacean Research along with research vessels' masters filed a lawsuit against the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) and Paul Watson," they said in a statement.

The Transparent State Enemy

Western Surveillance Technology in the Hands of Despots

By Uwe Buse and Marcel Rosenbach

He lives in Bahrain, the small island nation in the Persian Gulf. He is an English teacher, married and the father of a nine-year-old son. And he is also the chairman of a unique club. To become a member, one must have been tortured by the country's government.

Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar says that he has had to endure torture six times in the last 17 years. He has spoken about his ordeals before both the British House of Commons and representatives of the United Nations.

Activists beaten at COP17 by Durban 'volunteers'

CANAAN MDLETSHEand NIVASHNI NAIR 

The heavy-handed actions of the "green bombers" - so called by activists because of their green uniforms and aggression - and of unionists, who kicked an activist, were in full view of the world's media.

After Zuma had told the activists at a report-back session in the Durban City Hall that he felt that it was necessary for him to interact with civil society, pandemonium broke out when placards calling on him to "ditch Europe and the US" and not "let Africa fry" were held up.

The volunteers and Zuma's bodyguards pulled the placards from the activists and tore them up.

China tunnel and nuclear warhead follies 

By Peter Lee 

The recent hubbub over the size of China's nuclear warhead stockpile and its underground maze of missile hidey-holes, the notorious "Underground Great Wall of China" is, on one level, a battle between sensationalizing amateurs and incensed arms control professionals. 

On another level, it highlights a continuing nuclear security stand-off between the United States and China. 

The furor was kicked off by a November 29 article by the Washington Post's William Wan. It described a study of China's strategic nuclear missile program prepared by a team of students working under Phillip Karber, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, in an arms control seminar. Wan's breathless opening set the tone:

A Fire in Kolkata's AMRI hospital: 73 killed, several injured

Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey, TNN | Dec 9, 2011, 02.20PM IST

KOLKATA: The death toll at the Amri (Dhakuria) Hospital has risen to 73. The multistoreyed private hospital, turned into a towering inferno in the wee hours of the morning. 

The fire spread fast from the basement of the hospital, engulfing one ward after the other. While many patients died of burns, most died due to suffocation caused by carbon monoxide accumulation all over the building. About 50 bodies have been sent to the SSKM Hospital where post mortem has already been conducted on 42 bodies.