Six In The Morning

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other '9/11 plotters' back in court

　Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are to be charged by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.

The BBC 5 May 2012
An earlier attempt was halted three years ago when President Barack Obama tried to shut Guantanamo down. New rules for Guantanamo trials have been since introduced, including a ban on evidence obtained under torture. However, defence lawyers still say the system lacks legitimacy, because of restricted access to their clients. President Obama's efforts to hold Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial in New York foundered in the face of political and public opposition and it will now be held at a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, as previously planned

US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says United Nations
UN's correspondent on indigenous peoples urges government to act to combat 'racial discrimination' felt by Native Americans

Chris McGreal in Washington
A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination. James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes

Betrayed behind enemy lines: Army captain breaks silence on elite unit's fight for survival
Only outstanding valour and luck saved British soldiers trapped by Iraq's feared Republican Guard

Saturday 05 May 2012
British soldiers were abandoned behind enemy lines after a secret mission went disastrously wrong, their commander has revealed after almost a decade of silence. For the first time, Captain David Blakeley, 33, has spoken of how his patrol of just nine men were surrounded by hundreds of Saddam Hussein’s most feared troops after being sent far ahead of the frontline during the initial invasion of Iraq.

Sudan, S Sudan end hostilities amid UN deadline


HANNAH MCNEISH JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN
Sudan and South Sudan said they would cease hostilities to honour a UN deadline that passed Friday after weeks of bitter border clashes that sparked fears of full scale conflict. Rival forces remained in a tense standoff across their contested border but both Khartoum and Juba have pledged to seek peace after the UN Security Council on Wednesday threatened sanctions if the fighting continued. "There's nothing happening, or let's hope so," said South Sudan's army spokesperson Philip Aguer.

What's eating Lee Myung-bak?
Korea

By Donald Kirk
The sequence is simple: One more sick American cow, and the government here is in big trouble. The government here gets into trouble, and the North Korean regime can exploit the differences and make good on its dire threats - eg, the one about "special actions" lasting "three or four minutes". Has the possibility of a terrible illness befalling a single member of the bovine family ever carried such calamitous implications for the future of a region, any region? As of now, one US cow is down with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, that is BCE, mad cow disease, and demonstrators are already hitting the streets, holding little candles in paper cups, denouncing President Lee Myung-bak, the Free Trade Agreement with the US, the construction of a South Korean navy base on Jeju. You name it.

Mexico’s PRI, leading to retake presidency, vows not to return to old ways


By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers
MEXICO CITY — The Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials as the PRI, ruled Mexico for 71 consecutive years before it lost the presidency 12 years ago. Now, with its candidate the front-runner in the July 1 presidential election campaign, it’s trying to recast itself as no longer the corrupt, opaque and repressive machine that gripped Mexico for much of the 20th century in one-party rule. Competitors deride the idea of a “new PRI,” saying the party’s old practices will reappear if its candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, wins and takes office Dec. 1. Pena Nieto, a telegenic politician with a 100-watt smile, bristles, however, at suggestions that the PRI hasn’t adapted