Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Iran quakes death toll rises to 250, as search goes on

　Rescuers in Iran are searching through the rubble of collapsed buildings for survivors from two strong earthquakes which left at least 250 people dead.

The BBC 12 August 2012
The 6.4 and 6.3 quakes struck near Tabriz and Ahar on Saturday afternoon, and more than 2,000 are believed injured, many in outlying villages. Thousands spent the night in emergency shelters or in the open and there have been more than 55 aftershocks. Relief agencies are providing survivors with tents, bread and drinking water. The numbers of victims is expected to rise. Reports say phone lines to many villages have been cut off, confining rescuers to radio contact. "The quake has created huge panic among the people," one resident of Tabriz told the BBC. "Everyone has rushed to the streets and the sirens of ambulances are everywhere."

In Asia, a wave of escalating territorial disputes


By Chico Harlan, Published: August 11
The disputed islands and islets in Asia are, on the whole, an unimpressive bunch. Most are rocky, windswept outcroppings far from any mainland. One has a lighthouse but no people. But these tiny territories, sweeping from southeast to northeast Asia, are fiercely contested among countries that are buoyed by nationalism and by a growing thirst for the natural resources off their shores. At a time when the United States has promised to play a greater role in Asia, some security experts say the territories represent the region’s greatest potential flash point aside from North Korea.

Rio picks up torch for samba Games, but there are shadows in the sunshine
As Brazil promises an Olympics like no other, a bribery scandal erupts while the problem of guns and drugs has been shelved rather than solved

Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro The Observer, Sunday 12 August 2012
Rio de Janeiro's 700m-long Sambadrome promises to be one hell of a party venue. For four nights each southern summer, the city's samba schools parade here in a spectacular contest of music, colour and dancing. Today, however, it is being revamped for a still bigger festival and a very different series of competitions, as Brazil's "City of Marvels" gears up for one of the most intense bursts of international sport, partying and – many locals fear – chaos in history. Tonight Rio will receive the Olympic torch as the host of the 2016 Games, the first to be held in South America. Two years from now, the city will stage the World Cup. Organisers hope these two mega-events will transform the city, charm the world and highlight Brazil's diversity and achievements.

The terrible legacy of Agent Orange
Forty years after war ended, Washington begins decontamination of worst-affected areas in Vietnam

WILL ROBINSON SUNDAY 12 AUGUST 2012
Tran Thi Hoan, 26, studied medicine only to be told that she couldn't become a doctor because of a war fought 20 years before she was born. The ostensible reason was that she had no legs or left hand, but the main reason, and the cause of so much misery blighting the lives of millions of other Vietnamese, is the 20 million gallons of Agent Orange sprayed in her country by US forces in the Sixties. She is one of three million Vietnamese affected by the dioxin in Agent Orange – a poison that has caused untold cancers and an estimated 150,000 birth defects – which continue down the generations to this day.

Southern Europeans look for work in Germany
As unemployment rises in debt-stricken Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal, some residents of these countries are moving to Germany. But their numbers are considerably lower than some experts would have expected.


According to Germany's Federal Employment Agency, the number of employed people in Germany from Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal has risen sharply. In May, there were 11.5 percent more Spaniards and nearly 10 percent more Greeks working in Germany than at the same time last year. The rate of Italian and Portuguese workers had increased by around half that amount. "The increase itself is not surprising," said Herbert Brücker, a migration expert at the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg. "What does surprise me is that these numbers are so low."

Tunisia activists braced to fight for women's rights
Tunisian women are rising up against a proposed article in the new constitution seen by many as an Islamist ploy to reverse the principle of gender equality that made Tunisia a beacon of modernity in the Arab world when it was introduced six decades ago

Sapa-AFP | 11 8月, 2012 13:45
The National Constituent Assembly, elected after the downfall last year of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, is currently drafting a new national charter. The NCA parliamentary committee adopted last week a proposed article that activists say would compromise rights enshrined in the Personal Status Code (CSP) promulgated in 1956 under Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba. The article must still be ratified at a plenary session of the interim parliament.