Six In The Morning

Pakistan plane crash investigation begins

　Air crash investigators are combing the wreckage of a passenger plane that crashed near the Pakistani capital Islamabad, killing all 127 on board.

The BBC 21 April 2012
Rescue teams working through the night recovered many bodies as well as the jet's flight recorder, officials said. The Bhoja Air Boeing 737, which had flown from Karachi, crashed on its approach to the airport during a storm. Grieving relatives of the victims have been gathering at airports in Karachi and Islamabad. The head of Bhoja Air has been barred from leaving the country pending the outcome of the inquiry, officials said

Robert Fisk: This is politics not sport. If drivers can't see that, they are the pits
Supposing it was Assad shelling out £40m for a race. Would Ecclestone be happy to give him a soft sporting cover for his repression?

Saturday 21 April 2012
When the Foreign Office urges British motor racing fans to stay away from Bahrain, this ain't no sporting event, folks, it's a political one. The Bahraini authorities prove it by welcoming sports reporters but refusing visas to other correspondents who want to tell the world what's going on in this minority-run, Saudi-dominated kingdom. But what do our lads tell us from the circuit, 25 miles from the Bahraini capital, Manama? Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton are only in it for sport. Bahraini repression of its democratic majority?

Artists Turn Against Pirate Party
The rise of the Pirate Party has been swift and virtually without opposition, but resistance is now emerging. Writers and musicians have a problem with the Internet-freedom party's approach to intellectual property.

By Sven Becker, Jan Fleischhauer and Rene Pfister
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 82, is an ideal source of information when it comes to revolutionary movements. An essayist, poet and author, Enzensberger has been first a participant, then an onlooker and chronicler for every political upheaval and movement meant to lead the way into the future for the last five decades. Enzensberger, then a Marxist, was present for the birth of the "68ers," what the Germans call the participants of the political movements and student protests of the 1960s. He shared the fervor of Germany's center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in their fight against conservative politicians Franz Josef Strauss and later Helmut Kohl, and of course he rooted for the country's Green Party as it grew to become an established parliamentary party.

India's border force has crossed the line


Ben Doherty April 21, 2012
The Border Security Force soldiers are unfailingly polite and hospitable, but conspicuously armed and resolute. We go no further. ''Why do you need to go to the border? There is nothing there,'' we are told over endless cups of chai with progressively more senior officers, all of whom refuse us permission to travel beyond their cantonment, or photograph ''the fence'' a few hundred metres away. The border these men patrol is not India's antagonistic front with Pakistan, nor its contested line with China.

Ugandan troops play jungle cat and mouse with Kony


RIVER CHINKO, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
A Ugandan "hunting squad" pushes through the thick jungle of central Africa in search of the fugitive warlord Joseph Kony. It is tough terrain that favours the hunted. At times the Ugandan soldiers cover as little as 3km a day, labouring through hanging vines and dense foliage that cut visibility to a few metres and wading chest-deep through crocodile-infested rivers.

Torture claims emerge in China's Bo Xilai scandal
The Chinese politician who launched an attack on organised crime is accused of heading a police apparatus that carried out "evil" operations against its enemies.

By Michael Bristow BBC News, Beijing
Bo Xilai spearheaded a crackdown on Chongqing's mafia organisations, but people are now coming forward claiming this involved torture and false accusations. These allegations have emerged since Mr Bo was stripped of his political roles for serious violations of communist party discipline. These violations are linked to the death of the British businessman Neil Heywood, who was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing last November.