Six In The Morning

Non-Aligned Summit: Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons

　Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has opened a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement by saying his country is not seeking nuclear weapons.

The BBC 30 August 2012
Speaking as leaders and delegates of 50 countries gathered in Tehran, he also accused the US of "bullying" the world. The crisis in Syria is on the agenda for the two-day summit, as are human rights and nuclear disarmament. Egypt's President Mohammed Mursi is attending - the first visit to Iran by an Egyptian leader since 1979. The Non-Aligned Movement (Nam) was established in 1961 by countries that wanted to counterbalance the dominance of the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Water crisis will make Gaza strip 'unliveable'
Banks must approve plans for a $500m desalination plant that would provide a new water supply, conference hears

John Vidal in Stockholm guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 August 2012 07.00 BST
The Gaza strip faces a water crisis that will soon make it "unliveable" unless plans for a $500m desalination plant are approved by banks, delegates at a water conference in Stockholm were told this week. Water for the 1.6 million people – half of them children and two-thirds refugees – who live in just 365 sq km of land bordering the Mediterranean comes entirely from the shallow coastal aquifer shared between Gaza, Israel and Egypt, which is only partly replenished each year by rainfall. Decades of overpumping and heavy pollution from salts and waste water has left the aquifer highly degraded and in danger of irreparable damage.

Miners charged with murder – of colleagues shot dead by police
Lawyers say 270 workers will not get fair trial over strike massacre and demand their release

ALEX DUVAL SMITH THURSDAY 30 AUGUST 2012
State prosecutors have charged 270 strikers arrested at Marikana platinum mine with the murder of 34 colleagues. The arrests went ahead despite confirmation that the victims were shot dead by police, in the latest setback to prospects of peace in the South African mining industry. The strike at Marikana that called for 3,000 rock drillers to have their monthly pay increased to 12,500 rand (£940) has led to a total of 44 deaths, including those of two policemen and two security guards. In shocking scenes on 16 August, police opened fire on a group of miners, killing 34 and injuring 78.

Greeks turn immigrants to scapegoats
A confrontational tone is emerging in Greek society as racist attacks increase and political conflict escalates. Observers believe the economic crisis is just one of the reasons for the unrest.

dw.de
It happened in broad daylight on Saturday (25.08.2012) in the town of Manolada in western Greece, as migrant workers helped with the annual strawberry harvest. Two men jammed a 22-year-old Egyptian man in one of their car's windows after a heated argument then dragged him nearly a kilometer through town. According to police, the man had previously attacked the pair. According to leftist opposition newspapers, the Egyptian man had merely demanded outstanding wages. It was one of a handful of recent attacks on foreigners in Greece. Earlier this month, an Iraqi man was stabbed in downtown Athens, and human rights organizations report that at least 200 attacks with racist overtones happened in Greece in the past two months. For the most part, they blame the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party for stoking xenophobia. The party has 18 seats in the national parliament.

Live TV coverage put national security in jeopardy, says Bench
Security forces’ positions were being watched by collaborators across border’

NEW DELHI, August 29, 2012
Slamming the electronic media for its live coverage of the 26/11 terrorist attacks, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said that by doing so the Indian TV channels did not serve the national interest or any social cause. A Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and C.K. Prasad, while confirming the death sentence on the prime accused, Ajmal Kasab, said the “reckless coverage… gave rise to a situation where, on the one hand, the terrorists were completely hidden from the security forces and they had no means to know their exact positions or even the kind of firearms and explosives they possessed and, on the other, the positions of the security forces, their weapons and all their operational movements were being watched by the collaborators across the border on TV screens and being communicated to the terrorists.”

US agents attacked in Mexico believed to be CIA
The CIA presence in Mexico reportedly increased last year after the US deployed more agents to work alongside Mexican military officials in the fight against drug trafficking organizations.

By Edward Fox, InSight Crime
A leaked report in Mexico affirms that the US officials attacked by Mexican Federal Police last week were CIA agents, something that has since been confirmed to InSight Crime. Writing for El Universal, Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola claimed on August 28 that he had been privy to a confidential report confirming that the two US officials injured after Mexican Federal Police opened fire on their armored Toyota SUV in Morelos state on August 24 were in fact Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials. A high level intelligence source has since confirmed to InSight Crime that the men were CIA personnel.