Six In The Morning

New Syria 'mass killing' reported ahead of UN meeting

　Activists have released a video which they say shows another mass killing of civilians by a pro-government militia in Syria - the third in a week.


Thirteen factory workers were forced off a bus and executed by shabiha members in a village near Qusair, in the west of the country, they said. Correspondents say the video shows a group of bodies with hideous injuries. The UN Human Rights Council is due to meet in emergency session shortly to discuss the violence in Syria. It is expected to blame pro-government forces for last week's massacre in Houla, in which more than 100 people died, including 49 children.

Fear in the classrooms: is the Taliban poisoning Afghanistan's schoolgirls?
Hundreds in hospital – but are terror attacks on schools to blame, or mass hysteria?

Kabul Friday 01 June 2012
Hundreds of Afghan schoolchildren have been admitted to hospital in the past six weeks after falling victim to what appears to be six separate major poison attacks. Three alleged attacks have occurred in northern Takhar province in the past week alone, affecting more than 300 girls. Some government and police officials have blamed the poison attacks on the Taliban, whose hostility to girls' education during its hardline rule in the 1990s is well documented. Others have blamed the "enemies of Afghanistan" and hinted at the involvement of Pakistan and Iran.

Israeli minister urges unilateral declaration of Palestinian borders


Jodi Rudoren Tel Aviv June 1, 2012
DEFENCE Minister Ehud Barak wants Israel to consider imposing the borders of a future Palestinian state, becoming the most senior government official to suggest bypassing a stagnant peace process. Mr Barak's statement on Wednesday to consider what he and many Israelis call ''unilateral actions'' without offering any specifics, echoed an emerging chorus of political leaders, analysts and intellectuals who have said Israel needs its own solution to the Palestinian crisis.

Old and New China Meet along the Yellow River
The Yellow River, regarded as the cradle of Chinese civilization, winds its way more than 5,000 kilometers from the Tibetan Plateau to its mouth in the Bohai Sea.

By Andreas Lorenz
Qinghai is the end of the world. The remote province between the Tibetan Plateau and the deserts in the north was long considered China's Siberia, where the rulers in Beijing sent their prisoners, both criminal and political. The region is so remote that many labor camps have since been dismantled and moved to more accessible regions. In China's special form of socialism, even prison camps are expected to make a profit -- a tall order in forbidding Qinghai Province. Qinghai, meaning "green sea," is named after the large salt lake in the eastern part of the province. But the term could also be used to describe the endless grasslands on which Tibetan nomads graze their herds of yak and sheep. Nowadays, most of the shepherds have traded in their saddles for moped seats.

New dawn: Malawi restores 'rising sun' flag
Malawi is returning to its 1964 independence flag, replaced in 2010 in an "attack on the country's nationhood" by late leader Bingu wa Mutharika.


Malawi’s move to revert to its old national flag was approved by a parliamentary Bill this week. The country’s independence-era flag, first hoisted in 1964, was altered in 2010 by the government under the former president Bingu wa Mutharika. The flag’s image of a red rising sun was replaced with a full white sun to signify Malawi fulfilling its promise on development. Mutharika, who held power for eight years and died in April aged 78 from a heart attack, had claimed the country could not continue “to be at dawn in 2010 as we were in 1964 ... we don’t have to live permanently in the past”.

The 'Mexican spring:' A new student movement stirs in Mexico
#YoSoy132, a burgeoning student movement in Mexico, is calling for citizens to demand more of their politicians and institutions.

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer
“Welcome to the Mexican spring,” says a young student over a microphone on the campus of Mexico's most famed university, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “It's time for change; it is time for a new Mexico,” he continues, met by thunderous applause. Students in the audience are munching on potato chips with hot sauce and lemon and mango-flavored ices, and have gathered for the first general assembly of Mexico's brand-new student movement known as “#YoSoy132,” or “I am 132.” The movement rose spontaneously among private university students protesting the way, according to them, Mexico's television coverage of the presidential election campaign is unfairly boosting the former ruling party. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held power in Mexico for 71 years.