Six In The Morning

Syria defiant after PM Riad Hijab defection

　Syria's new cabinet has met in emergency session, after Prime Minister Riad Hijab defected and denounced Damascus's "terrorist regime".

The BBC 7 August 2012
The White House said the defection showed that President Bashar al-Assad's government was "crumbling from within". But Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said Mr Hijab had not appeared in person and he rejected reports of other ministerial defections. Meanwhile, reports suggest the army has stepped up its bombardment of Aleppo. Government forces are trying to dislodge rebel fighters who have taken control of some areas of Syria's second city. Opposition activists report intense attacks on rebel-held areas on the north-east and south-west sides of the city.

Sinai attack reverberates across region
Middle East

By Victor Kotsev
The sophisticated attack in which 16 Egyptian soldiers and at least seven terrorists were killed on Sunday near the Egypt-Israel border threatens to unravel the delicate relationship between Cairo, Jerusalem and the Palestinian Hamas militant organization which controls the Gaza Strip. In all likelihood, it will also impact the expected Palestinian bid for non-member status at the United Nations next month, as well as the already explosive state of affairs inside Egypt. Several slightly different versions of what exactly happened exist, but it is particularly shocking that the militants - believed to be Global Jihad operatives from the Sinai Peninsula and the nearby Gaza Strip - set out by attacking an Egyptian military post. The terrorists chose a time when the soldiers were praying and preparing to break their Ramadan fast in order to maximize the element of surprise, prompting the Egyptian military to brand them as "infidels"

Credit crunch: from boom to bust
How the world's economy plunged into recession

The Guardian, Tuesday 7 August 2012
9 August 2007 BNP Paribas freeze three of their funds, indicating that they have no way of valuing the complex assets inside them known as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), or packages of sub-prime loans. It is the first major bank to acknowledge the risk of exposure to sub-prime mortgage markets. Adam Applegarth (right), Northern Rock's chief executive, later says that it was "the day the world changed" Larry Elliott, economics editor, said: "As far as the financial markets are concerned, August 9 2007 has all the resonance of August 4 1914. It marks the cut-off point between 'an Edwardian summer' of prosperity and tranquillity and the trench warfare of the credit crunch – the failed banks, the petrified markets, the property markets blown to pieces by a shortage of credit

Safe sex? Indonesia's conservatives would rather 'sinners' and sex-workers got Aids
Katherine Butler reports from Jakarta, where religious intolerance is undermining the fight against Asia's fastest-growing HIV epidemic

KATHERINE BUTLER JAKARTA TUESDAY 07 AUGUST 2012
Her name may or may not be Rizki. In any case, it’s what the 29 year old with long sleek black hair calls herself for work. In her T shirt with a cartoon character on the front, cropped jeans and sensible sandals she looks as if she could be on her way to a job in one of the factories in Bekasi, an industrial sprawl east of Jakarta that’s home to big international manufacturing giants like Converse and Samsung. But Rizki works in a bar in a Bekasi shantytown called Tenda Biru, where every night from 9pm to 3am, she dances with the long distance truck drivers and factory workers who come here to drink and relax after their shifts. If they want sex, she sells that to them too.

Meeting a rare being - an Arab-Israeli woman parliamentarian
The Irish Times - Tuesday, August 7, 2012

PATSY McGARRY
HANEEN ZOABI is that rarest of beings, an Arab-Israeli woman who is a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Two other Arab-Israeli women have preceded her there. Hussniya Jabara served from 1999 to 2003 with the social democratic Meretz party, while Nadia Hilou, an Arab-Israeli Christian woman member of the Labor party, was in the Knesset from 2006 to 2009. But Haneen Zoabi became the first Arab-Israeli woman to be elected to the Knesset on an Arab party’s list. That happened in 2009 when she stood for the Balad party, which opposes the idea of Israel as a Jewish state and favours it being a democracy with equal rights for all, regardless of national or ethnic backgrounds.

Mali Islamists beat journalist after sharia plan thwarted


By AFP Posted Monday, August 6 2012 at 19:54
Islamists occupying northern Mali beat a radio presenter for reporting on their failed efforts to amputate a thief's hand as an embattled interim regime in the capital struggled to win back confidence. Amid attempts by Islamists to enforce sharia in the occupied vast desert north, the government vowed Monday to work flat out to regain lost territory and underscored its commitment to secularism. However protesters demanding the resignation of interim President Dioncounda Traore took to the streets of the capital Bamako and police fired tear gas to disperse them. In the extremist-occupied north, radio presenter Abdoul Malick Maiga was in the Gao hospital on Monday after a thrashing by the town's Islamist rulers.