Six In The Morning

Murky plots, attacks are tied to Israel-Iran shadow war

　Undercover conflict signals return to tactics of cold war, analyst says

By NICHOLAS KULISH and JODI RUDOREN
A magnetic bomb detonated on a diplomatic car in New Delhi. The police uncovered a cache of explosives at a golf course in the Kenyan city of Mombasa. Five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed in an attack outside the airport in the Black Sea coastal city of Burgas. These were just a few of what some Israeli and American intelligence officials say were nearly a dozen plots that form the backbone of a continuing offensive by Iran and Hezbollah against Israel and its allies abroad. But the links seem tenuous at times, the tactics variable, the targets scattered across the globe, from the Caucasus to Southeast Asia to the Mediterranean. “This is not a spy thriller that necessarily has a plot readers can follow from page to page,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Iran and Hezbollah both thrive on reasonable deniability.”

Official says court heard that wife of disgraced Chinese politician poisoned businessman


By Associated Press,
The wife of disgraced politician Bo Xilai invited a British businessman to a hotel room, where she got him drunk on wine and fed him poison, according to the evidence presented Thursday in one of China’s highest-profile murder trials in years. The trial of Gu Kailai and a household aide, who are accused of murdering Bo family associate Neil Heywood, lasted all of four hours. International media were barred from the courtroom, so details of the case against Gu were provided by Tang Yigan, deputy director of the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court in eastern China.

Away from the famines, Africa confronts a new killer: obesity
Fast food and urban lifestyles bring scourge of the developed world to a changing continent

JEREMY LAURANCE THURSDAY 09 AUGUST 2012
In the public mind, sub-Saharan Africa is a region plagued by war, famine and disease. Now it faces a new threat – obesity. It is not a problem widely associated with a continent where millions live on less than a dollar a day. But growing rates of obesity are posing a significant risk to the health of the next generation. With a population that has passed one billion, Africa is starting to experience the ills of the developed world, driven by changing diets, urbanisation and increasingly sedentary lives, according to research published in The Lancet. The reasons for the steep rise in obesity among some of the world's poorest nations is hotly debated.

The Shadowy World of the Islamic Gülen Movement
Millions of Muslims around the world idolize Turkish preacher Fethullah Gülen, who likes to present himself as the Gandhi of Islam. His Gülen movement runs schools in 140 countries and promotes interfaith dialogue. But former members describe it as a sect, and some believe the secretive organization is conspiring to expand its power in Turkey.

By Maximilian Popp
The girl is singing a little off-key, but the audience is still wildly enthusiastic. She is singing a Turkish song, although her intonation sounds German. The room is decorated with balloons, garlands in the German national colors of black, red and gold, and crescent moons in the Turkish colors of red and white. Members of the audience are waving German and Turkish flags. The Academy cultural association is hosting the preliminaries of the "Cultural Olympics" in a large lecture hall at Berlin's Technical University. Thousands of people have come to watch the talent contest. They applaud loudly when a choir from the German-Turkish Tüdesb school sings "My Little Green Cactus."

Children kept underground for years by Russian 'prophet'
They looked nourished but dirty, so we had to wash them.

August 9, 2012 - 8:08AM
A self-proclaimed prophet had a vision from God: He would build an Islamic caliphate under the earth. The digging began about a decade ago and 70 followers soon moved into an eight-level subterranean honeycomb of cramped cells with no light, heat or ventilation. Children were born. They, too, lived in the cold underground cells for many years — until authorities raided the compound last week and freed the 27 sons and daughters of the sect. Ages 1 to 17, the children rarely saw the light of day and had never left the property, attended school or been seen by a doctor, officials said on Wednesday. Their parents — sect members who call themselves "muammin," from the Arabic for "believers" — were charged with child abuse.

American (jihadi) Idol
THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar
I don’t want a holiday in the sun I wanna go to the new Belsen I wanna see some history Cause now I got a reasonable economy - The Sex Pistols, Holidays in the Sun Jihadis of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your stage fright. After Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan, the West has fallen in love with you all over again - big time. As if any extra proof was needed, here it is - straight from the mouth of the US establishment, as personified by the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). [1] How lovely to learn that "Free Syrian Army (FSA) batallions are tired, divided, chaotic, an ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized ... Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now".