Six In The Morning

China poised to limit use of mental hospitals to curb dissent

Chinese lawmakers are drawing up laws that would spell out when people can be confined to psychiatric hospitals against their will.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
The hardest thing about being imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital is keeping your sanity. Li Jinping knows. The 47-year-old political activist spent seven months in Beijing'sChaoyang District Mental Health Center, heavily sedated. If he refused his drugs, he would be tied to his bed. Unlike other patients, he wasn't allowed to walk in the garden, use the library or receive visitors. In fact, his family didn't even know he was there; the police had registered him in the hospital under a false name.

Robert Fisk: Madness is not the reason for this massacre


ROBERT FISK SATURDAY 17 MARCH 2012
I'm getting a bit tired of the "deranged" soldier story. It was predictable, of course. The 38-year-old staff sergeant who massacred 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, near Kandahar this week had no sooner returned to base than the defence experts and the think-tank boys and girls announced that he was "deranged". Not an evil, wicked, mindless terrorist – which he would be, of course, if he had been an Afghan, especially a Taliban – but merely a guy who went crazy.

Greeks face challenges to carrying out reform, warns commission
The Irish Times - Saturday, March 17, 2012

ARTHUR BEESLEY, European Correspondent
THE EUROPEAN Commission has warned of significant “implementation risks” in the second Greek bailout, saying the continuation of emergency aid can only be expected if policy implementation improves. Days after euro zone member states finally endorsed the new EU-International Monetary Fund programme for the country, the commission said in two separate reports that Greek leaders face a daunting challenge as they strive to execute the plan.

I'd kidnap Israeli soldiers if I were Palestinian - Shalit


Phoebe Greenwood March 17, 2012
JERUSALEM: The father of an Israeli soldier held in captivity for more than five years by Hamas has said he would kidnap Israeli soldiers if he were a Palestinian. Noam Shalit, who announced earlier this year that he would be standing for the opposition Labour Party in the next Israeli elections, has provoked outrage among the Israeli right with the comments. His son, Gilad, was released in a prisoner swap last October.

Senior cops arrested for Egypt soccer violence
Egypt's top prosecutor charged nine senior police officers on Thursday with assisting a murderous mob of soccer fans who killed 74 rival supporters last month after a match in the Mediterranean city of Port Said.

HAMZA HENDAWI CAIRO, EGYPT
Many Egyptians accuse police of looking the other way while violent crime has spiked in the year since Hosni Mubarak's ouster in an uprising. But the charges in the Port Said riot went a step further, alleging the police actually aided the perpetrators of the world's worst soccer-related disaster in 15 years. The riot set off days of deadly clashes in Cairo between police and protesters, who accused the Interior Ministry of doing nothing to protect fans. The interior ministry oversees the police.

The music accused of glorifying Naples gangsters
It is a music video of the darkest kind. Set to a hammering beat, the song tells the story of an execution by the Camorra, as the mafia is known in the Italian city of Naples.

By Alan Johnston BBC News, Naples
But there is no sympathy for the victim. Just the opposite. The singer praises the Camorra boss who orders the killing of a "traitor". The video shows the gangster giving the hitman his instructions, telling him who his target will be. Then we see the assassin handing his horrified victim a note with his name on it. His Camorra death warrant.