Six In The Morning

Colorado Springs: Waldo Canyon wildfire spreads

　 Fire spreads overnight as more than 32,000 people are ordered to leave the area

Suzanne Goldenberg in Colorado Springs guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2012 08.39 BST
Colorado's ferocious Waldo Canyon wildfire has spread to an area of 67 square kilometres (26 square miles) threatening more than 20,000 homes and other buildings. More than 1,000 firefighters are trying to quell the flames that have burned some luxury homes to their foundations and forced thousands to flee. Overnight on Wednesday, local television showed pictures of flames shooting up the length of Blodgett Peak ridge, which overlooks the air force academy. The flames at one point blew past the fire lines, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Springs fire department said. Neighbourhoods north and west of the city were shrouded in smoke. Some were deserted after authorities expanded their evacuation orders, blocking off main roads with patrol cars.

Has the Arab Spring now spread to Sudan?
Protesters take to the streets of Khartoum to demand democracy and lower prices

Thursday 28 June 2012
Khartoum is braced for a "make or break" day of demonstrations tomorrow, as anger at the rising cost of living spills over into Arab Spring-style protests on the streets of Sudan's capital. Authorities have responded with a violent crackdown, which has drawn international condemnation but failed to quell public defiance. Police have fired on demonstrators with rubber bullets and tear gas, university dormitories have been raided and students beaten, while hundreds of activists and opposition leaders have been jailed.

EU leaders divided as crucial debt crisis talks readied
The Irish Times - Thursday, June 28, 2012

ARTHUR BEESLEY in Brussels
DIVISIONS BETWEEN EU leaders were deep as ever as they readied crucial talks in Brussels today on the expanding debt crisis. The summit comes amid doubt over the rescue plan for Spain and it follows a request for emergency aid by Cyprus, the fifth euro zone country to seek a bailout. Although Europe’s effort to prop up Spain’s banks assumes Madrid will retain access to private debt markets for regular borrowing, prime minister Mariano Rajoy said Madrid could not expect to continue financing itself at current rates indefinitely. At the same time, German chancellor Angela Merkel said any move to mutualise banking or sovereign liabilities would be wrong.

Top Pakistani and US generals meet as analysts question the value of military talks
Gen. John Allen, commander of US troops in Afghanistan, is visiting Pakistan's military chief. Do these sorts of talks undermine America's professed goal of strengthening Pakistan's civilian government?

By Mahvish Ahmad, Correspondent
The top commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, met with Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani today to urge Pakistan to crack down on militants who launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. Military-to-military meetings are common between the two countries, especially as Pakistan’s military apparatus has had the power there. But as the civilian government and the courts begin to establish themselves in line with more democratic norms, some are questioning how good military-level meetings are for Pakistan’s democracy. Amid the deterioration of US-Pakistan relations, some US officials say Washington should take a different tack and circumvent the military to talk directly to the civilian government.

For Mexican voters gripped by fear, few good choices


By Nick Miroff and William Booth, Thursday, June 28
Tampico, Mexico — The two Mexicos exist side by side in this steamy port city built by wildcatters and stevedores: the good, modern, more prosperous Mexico and the really bad Mexico, where gun battles break out at the local T.G.I. Friday’s and kidnapping crews roam middle-class neighborhoods, snatching teenage girls. Voters here have their lives on the line in Mexico’s presidential election Sunday, in a city a few hours’ drive south of Texas where the municipal police were so hopelessly corrupt that they had their weapons taken away and their duties transferred to convoys of masked soldiers deployed to stem outright panic after two former mayors were abducted.

Is Turkey moving toward 'hard power' over Syria?
Editor's note: Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish journalist and the author of "Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty." (WW Norton, 2011)

By Mustafa Akyol, Special to CNN June 28, 2012
The downing of a Turkish jet over the Mediterranean last Friday by a Syrian missile took Turkish-Syrian tensions to a new level. Though the Turkish government did not declare war as some expected, and others feared, it did declare Syria a "clear and present danger" and raised its rules of engagement to an alert level. How we came to this point is an interesting story. The 550-mile long border with Syria, Turkey's longest, has often been tense. During the Cold War, Syria was a Soviet ally, Turkey was a NATO member (as it still is) and the border was heavily mined. Moreover, Hafez Assad, the father and predecessor of Syria's current dictator, Bashar al-Assad, supported and hosted the PKK, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, which has led a guerrilla war against Turkey since the early '80s.