Six In The Morning

American Woman Who Shattered Space Ceiling

　

By DENISE GRADY
Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, died on Monday at her home in San Diego. She was 61. The cause was pancreatic cancer, her company, Sally Ride Science, announced on its Web site. Dr. Ride, a physicist who was accepted into the space program in 1978 after she answered a newspaper ad for astronauts, flew on the shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983, and on a second mission in 1984. At 32, she was also the youngest American in space. She later became the only person to sit on both panels investigating the catastrophic shuttle accidents that killed all astronauts on board — the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia crash in 2003.

Why is Google picking a fight with the mafia?
Last week's Google gathering on how to combat organized crime garnered headlines, but many questions remain unanswered.

By Steven Dudley, InSight Crime
Google Ideas' two-day conference on how to best use technology to fight criminal networks was a forum for tough, anti-mafia rhetoric, but competing interests and few concrete proposals make the proposed geek-government-activist partnership more difficult than advertised. If there was doubt about Google's resolve in fighting what it calls "Illicit Networks," some of it was washed away with a few words from Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on day one of the conference: "At the end of the day, there really are bad people, and you have to go in and arrest them and kill them."

Searching for the Truth Behind the Houla Massacre
Initially, the United Nations was convinced that the Syrian government was behind the brutal Houla massacre. But then, some began to have doubts.

By Christoph Reuter and Abd al-Kadher Adhun
Nothing is going to happen, Muawiya Sayyid, a retired police officer, reassured his family on the afternoon of May 25. They were afraid to leave the house, but Sayyid reminded his family that he had been a colonel and troops with regime connections had remained unharmed in previous raids. It was a fatal miscalculation, as Colonel Sayyid was forced to realize during the last few minutes of his life. According to statements by his surviving wife and daughter, he was in his room on the second floor when he overheard the murderers in front of the house as they agreed bring out the women first and then kill everyone. He told his wife and children to run. "I'll try to stall them," he said. He succeeded, but paid for it with his life.

EU ready to back African stabilisation force in Mali


By AFP
The European Union said Monday it was ready to back the deployment of an African stabilisation force under UN mandate in Mali, and threatened sanctions against those threatening democratic change. EU foreign ministers gathered in Brussels asked EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton to make "concrete proposals" on support for "the possible deployment of a well-prepared ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) force in Mali, under a UN mandate and in conjunction with a government of national unity and the African Union."

Three Vatican 'moles' named in leaks scandal
A cardinal, a bishop and the Pope's German housekeeper come under investigation

MICHAEL DAY TUESDAY 24 JULY 2012
Three Vatican figures, including two senior members of the clergy, have been named as suspected moles in a scandal that has seen the Holy See rocked by a series of damaging leaks. The new intrigue comes just days after Pope Benedict's butler Paolo Gabriele, 46, was released from jail and placed under house arrest for his suspected part in the affair.

Why is India so bad for women?
Of all the rich G20 nations, India has been labelled the worst place to be a woman. But how is this possible in a country that prides itself on being the world's largest democracy?

Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk,
In an ashram perched high on a hill above the noisy city of Guwahati in north-east India is a small exhibit commemorating the life of India's most famous son. Alongside an uncomfortable-looking divan where Mahatma Gandhi once slept is a display reminding visitors of something the man himself said in 1921: "Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex (not the weaker sex)." One evening two weeks ago, just a few miles downhill, a young student left a bar and was set upon by a gang of at least 18 men. They dragged her into the road by her hair, tried to rip off her clothes and smiled at the cameras that filmed it all. It was around 9.30pm on one of Guwahati's busiest streets – a chaotic three-lane thoroughfare soundtracked by constantly beeping horns and chugging tuk-tuks.