Six In The Morning

Spate of deadly attacks across Iraq

　At least 50 people killed after series of explosions and gun attacks in various cities, including capital Baghdad.

Last Modified: 23 Jul 2012 08:32
A series of gun and bomb attacks has wracked Iraq for the second straight day, with unidentified gunmen targeting a military base and car bombs exploding in Baghdad, Kirkuk and elsewhere. At least 50 people are reported to have been killed and 131 injured in at least 17 separate explosions and attacks on Monday morning, officials said. At least seven Iraqi soldiers were killed and four others injured after gunmen attacked a military base in Salah Din province, medics and security officials said. An army official put the death toll in that attack at 15. The attack took place early on Monday morning, while the soldiers were still asleep, in a base east of Dhuluiyah township, about 90km north of Baghdad. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Robert Fisk: If Alawites are turning against Assad then his fate is sealed
The Long View: There seems to be a Baathist pattern of destroying Sunni villages on the edge of the Alawite heartland

ROBERT FISK MONDAY 23 JULY 2012
'Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' th' Tiger," Macbeth's First Witch announces, but Shakespeare got his geography a bit wrong. Aleppo is 70 miles from the Mediterranean. It's certainly ancient; Aleppo was mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Ebla in the third millennium BC and belonged to the Hittites and the Emperor Justinian, its 14th-century citadel walls still lowering today over the revolutionary capital of northern Syria. And that's the point. While the drama of last week's assault on Bashar al-Assad's regime in Damascus stunned the Arab world, the sudden outbreak of violence in Aleppo this weekend was in one way far more important.

A Hedge Fund Manager's Crusade against Putin
Financial investor Bill Browder was once a fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But after his lawyer died in prison under suspicious circumstances, he launched a crusade against the Kremlin. The case has gained the attention of the OSCE and the US Senate.

By Matthias Schepp and Anne Seith
The text message Bill Browder, a London-based hedge fund manager, received on his phone was lifted directly from a mafia thriller. "If history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone," Michael Corleone says in "The Godfather: Part II." Browder doesn't know who sent him the quote. It wasn't, however, the only one. The 48-year-old has several such text messages, which he believes to be from Russian intelligence agents. He explains all this in a matter-of-fact, business-like tone, as if this were all still just a question of money and business rather than life and death.

China's elite spend beach holiday vying for power
July 23, 2012

Edward Wong, Jonathan Ansfield
BEIDAIHE, China: It is midsummer in Beidaihe, which means one thing: Communist Party elders and their families are congregating here, about 290 kilometres east of Beijing, to swim, dine and gossip, and to shape the future of the world's most populous nation. It is palace intrigue by the sea. In their guarded villas, present and past leaders will negotiate to try to place their allies in the 25-member politburo and its elite standing committee, at the top of the party hierarchy. The selections will be announced at the 18th party congress in Beijing later in the year, heralding what is expected to be only the second orderly leadership transition in more than 60 years of Communist rule.

Resistance to AIDS drugs shows in parts of Africa
Resistance to AIDS drugs, a problem that has been widely feared over the last decade, is growing in parts of Africa but should not hamper the life-saving drug rollout, researchers reported on Monday.

Sapa-AFP | 23 July, 2012 10:41
Tiny genetic mutations that make HIV immune to key frontline drugs have been increasing in eastern and southern Africa, something that should be a clear warning to health watchdogs, they said. "Without continued and increased national and international efforts, rising HIV drug resistance could jeopardize a decade-long trend of decreasing HIV/AIDS-related illness and death in low- and middle-income countries," they said. The study, published in The Lancet, is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the European Union (EU).

Rohingyas recount terror of Burma clashes
Zohara Khatun is still reeling from the trauma of seeing her father killed in western Burma in June.

By Anbarasan Ethirajan BBC News, Teknaf, near Bangladesh-Burma border
"My father was shot dead by the Burmese military in front me. Our entire village was destroyed. We ran for our lives. I still don't know what happened to my mother," she said, sitting in a thatched hut in a fishing village near the town of Teknaf in south-eastern Bangladesh. Ms Khatun is one of the Rohingya Muslims who have managed to cross into Bangladesh following the communal unrest in western Burma's Rakhine province. The 30-year old broke down repeatedly as she tried to explain what happened over the border.