Six In The Morning

Syrian crisis: Fresh fighting hits Damascus and Aleppo

　Fresh fighting has been reported around Syria's capital, Damascus, and in the northern city of Aleppo, where rebels are trying to secure their positions.

The BBC 4 August 2012
Most areas of Aleppo where rebels are entrenched have been bombarded by government forces and clashes have been reported in several districts. The violence comes after a UN General Assembly vote to criticise the Security Council for failing to act on Syria. The UN also condemned the Syrian government for its use of violence. The focus of the fighting is also on the southern edge of Damascus where shelling and gunfire were reported from the Tadamon quarter, despite it having been earlier stormed by government forces, says the BBC's Jim Muir, reporting from Beirut.

Future is assured for death-dealing, life-saving drones
Developers predict that pilotless devices will join planes in civilian airspace – and dream of electric robots counting sheep

Owen Bowcott and Nick Hopkins The Guardian, Saturday 4 August 2012
Lieutenant Uchatius could not have expected it at the time but his novel attack on Venice in August 1849 has become an important date in the history of modern aviation. The Austrian army officer launched 200 "balloon bombs" controlled by lengths of copper wire and timed fuses, over the city in an attempt to get the Venetians to surrender. He Uchtaius may might not have been the mother of invention but he may well have been the father of a new weapon: the military drone. More than 160 years later, technology is driving military and civilian uses of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into remarkable areas.

Equatorial Guinea's dictator attempts to rebrand himself as a champion of human rights with the help of a Clinton-endorsed charity
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo's PR campaign begins on 20 August, when he welcomes 4,000 delegates, including world leaders, Hollywood actors, Emmy-winning pop stars, famous athletes, and a cross-section of US television celebrities, to the city of Malabo

GUY ADAMS LOS ANGELES FRIDAY 03 AUGUST 2012
He is the dictator’s dictator: a spectacular kleptocrat who seized power in a coup and has presided over Equatorial Guinea for more than three decades, imprisoning political opponents, censoring hostile media coverage and rigging Presidential elections, which he has occasionally won with more than 95 per cent of the vote. Now Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, whose appetite for the proceeds of thuggish corruption saw him described by the US authorities as the head of “an ongoing family criminal conspiracy,” is attempting to perform bizarre career volte face.

What Happened to the Spain Where I Was Born?
SPIEGEL reporter Juan Moreno grew up in Germany as the son of Spanish immigrants. He cherished summers spent as a child in his parents' former village.

By Juan Moreno
A few months ago, I was interviewed by a short, roundish man, a Spanish TV host I had never seen but who every child in Spain knows: Jordi Évole. He used to be the sidekick of a late-night talk show host. We met on a cold, wet Saturday morning at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Évole asked me to talk about Germany -- as the son of Spanish immigrants, but mostly as a German. He wanted me to explain what we, the Germans, are doing right and they, the Spaniards, are doing wrong. Évole hosts one of the most successful programs on Spanish television. He is both an investigative journalist and a comedian.

Occupy' with Chinese characteristics
Greater China

By Peter Lee
One of life's many ironies is that the Occupy model of disobedient activism has racked up more successes in the land ruled by that poster child of remorseless authoritarianism, the Chinese Communist Party, than it has in the United States. US Occupy activists were quickly and efficiently shoveled into the "dirty dreamy disorderly hippie radical" box by political, economic, and media elites eager to make the world safe for income inequality. For their part, the activists - very much like the 1989 protesters in China - were all too eager to occupy the morally (and, up to a point, physically) safer high ground of non-violent civil disobedience.

Venezuelan fencer rides wave of Olympic-gold-glory – on public transportation
At a time when the Olympic games are criticized for turning into a billion-dollar affair, Venezuela's Ruben Limardo's choice to take the Tube, instead of a chauffeured car, received praise.

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer
The photo of the Venezuelan athlete who won gold in fencing Wednesday night and then boarded London's subway system hours later, letting strangers touch his medal, has spread around the globe. At a time when the Olympic games are criticized for turning into a billion-dollar affair where athletes are treated as celebrities, Ruben Limardo's simple decision to take public transport, instead of a chauffeured car, has received international praise. “What a fantastic thing to do! Must have given all the passengers a real treat,” wrote one reader of Yahoo News.