SIx In The Morning

Syria: Tunis conference seeks diplomatic breakthrough

A major conference is being held in Tunisia to seek a breakthrough in the increasingly bitter Syrian unrest.

The BBC 24 February 2012
The US, Europe and Arab countries plan to challenge President Bashar al-Assad to provide humanitarian access within days to the worst-affected areas. But Russia and China, key allies of Syria which have blocked UN resolutions again Damascus, are not attending the "Friends of Syria" conference. Activists say more than 90 people died across Syria on Thursday. Around 70 nations, including the US, UK, France and Turkey are attending the conference, organised by the Arab League

Family of three die from apparent starvation in Japan
Discovery raises questions over the official response to rising poverty levels among the elderly and the unemployed in Japan

Justin McCurry in Tokyo guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 February 2012 05.04 GMT
Authorities in Japan are under pressure to explain how three members of the same family were allowed to die of apparent starvation, after their bodies were discovered two months after their deaths. Police found the bodies of a couple believed to be in their 60s and their son, thought to be in his 30s, at their apartment in Saitama, north of Tokyo, after the building's owner said he had been unable to contact them.

The hard labour behind soft drinks
Coca-Cola is being urged to help end exploitation in Italian orange groves

Andrew Wasley Friday 24 February 201
Coca-Cola is facing questions about its links to orange harvesting in southern Italy, which campaigners say relies on the cheap labour of African migrants living in squalid conditions. An investigation into citrus fruit growing in Calabria has revealed how thousands of African workers, many of whom have made the treacherous voyage across the Mediterranean in search of a new life, are earning as little as €25 (£21) for a day's picking in orange groves in a region that supplies juice concentrates to several multinational companies.

Activists try to shake off whalers in Australian waters


February 24, 2012 - 1:22PM
Sea Shepherd ships are again headed for Australian waters in an attempt to shake off their long Southern Ocean pursuit by Japanese whalers. The refuelled long-range ship Bob Barker has left Wellington and plans to rendezvous with the Steve Irwin at Macquarie Island early next week, the conservation group's leader, Paul Watson, said today. The Tasmanian sub-Antarctic island was the scene of a cat-and-mouse chase in early January, when the Yushin Maru No.3 followed the Bob Barker inside the Australian 12-mile territorial limit there.

Inside the kommando camp that turns boys' doubts to hate
Thick clouds of diesel smoke fill the air outside a run-down guest farm outside the town of Carolina in Mpumalanga.

ELLES VAN GELDER JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Feb 24 2012 06:43
It is after midnight when the boys heft bags full of military clothing. "There are old blood stains on my uniform," one of them says, as he trades his sneakers for army boots. Shouted orders ring out. The harsh intimidation begins immediately. Groaning, the boys raise 4m tent poles among the cowpats dotting the grassland. The large army tent will be their home for the next nine days.

What is Iran's Supreme Leader's game?
THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar
We interrupt this program to ask the supreme war-or-peace question; what game is Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei really playing? A recurrent theme among the lively Iranian global diaspora is that the Supreme Leader is the perfect US/Israel asset - as he incarnates Iran (although in many cases less than President Mahmud Ahmadinejad) as "the enemy"; in parallel, the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat in Tehran also needs "the enemy" - as in the Great Satan and the Zionists - to justify its monopoly of power.