Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Anti-Islam film: Pakistan minister's bounty condemned
The Pakistani PM's spokesman has condemned a minister's $100,000 (£61,600) reward for the killing of the maker of an amateur anti-Islam video.

The BBC 23 September 2012
Shafqat Jalil told the BBC the government "absolutely disassociated" itself from comments by Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour. The film, produced in the US, has led to a wave of protests in the Muslim world and many deaths. The bounty offer came a day after at least 20 died in clashes in Pakistan. Friday's violence, which saw protesters pitted against armed police, occurred in cities throughout Pakistan, with Karachi and Peshawar among the worst hit. "I will pay whoever kills the makers of this video $100,000," the minister said. "If someone else makes other similar blasphemous material in the future, I will also pay his killers $100,000.

Now in power, rifts emerge within Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood
How to deal with the U.S. and Israel, the movement's longtime foes, is one of the issues creating divisions within the Muslim Brotherhood now that it is running the government.

By Ned Parker and Reem Abdellatif, Los Angeles Times
It was a recent Saturday night at the U.S. Embassy and a delegation of more than 100 American business leaders was rubbing shoulders with Egyptian counterparts, some of them affiliated with the newly dominant Muslim Brotherhood. Hassan Malak, a longtime Brotherhood leader, sat on a couch in deep conversation with an economic official from the embassy as executives from Boeing and Cisco floated through the crowd. Malak, who made his fortune selling furniture and software, was blunt. "We need investments," he told a group of foreign reporters, in a break from his tete-a-tete with the embassy official.

Viva Macau: What does the future hold for China's gambling capital?
Once a sleepy Portuguese colony, China’s gambling capital is now playing for high stakes, taking five times the gaming revenues of its American rival. But mega-moguls are jostling for dominance and triad violence has resurfaced.

CLIFFORD COONAN SUNDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2012
Chinese gamblers stand at a bus stop outside the Sands casino in Macau, once a somnolent Portuguese colony, now a glitzy playground that every year generates five times more in gross gaming revenues than the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. The streets are thronged. Some of those waiting for the shuttle are groups of laughing tourists, but many are single visitors, sullen or indifferent as they stand beneath a sign saying "To border gate". They are heading back to mainland China via Zhuhai, or through Hong Kong.

Belarus elects new parliament amid opposition boycott
President Alexander Lukashenko's ruling party is likely to sweep the board in Sunday's parliamentary elections in Belarus, not least as two of the main opposition groups have boycotted the polls, calling them a sham.

DW.DE
Polls opened in the capital Minsk and the rest of Belarus on Sunday, with voters invited to elect 110 people to the country's legislature. The last such vote in 2008 led to a landslide victory for the candidates loyal to President Alexander Lukashenko, officially classified as independents, who raked in all but seven of the available seats. The remainder went to the Communist and farmers' parties, neither of which are considered genuine opposition groups. Sunday's ballot is unlikely to yield a different result. Two of the main opposition parties have urged voters to boycott the elections, publishing promotional videos encouraging people to take their families to the park or to go fishing instead. This campaign is unlikely to result, however, in a sufficiently low turnout to invalidate the vote.

People power drums Libya's jihadists out of Benghazi
There were incredible scenes in Benghazi as tens of thousands of citizens marched on the Islamic extremists in their compounds.

23 SEP 2012 06:43 - CHRIS STEPHEN
As fires blazed and protesters danced in the ruined compound of a vanquished jihadist militia, I watched as the citizens of the Libyan city of Benghazi staged a dramatic display of raw people power. Numbed by the murder of an American ambassador in their city, furious with jihadist militias lording it over them and frustrated by a government too chaotic and intimidated to react, ordinary Benghazians took matters into their own hands. Elsewhere in the world jihadists staged fiery attacks on foreign targets. In Libya they were sent running by people power. A rally called to Rescue Benghazi on Friday night became the launch pad for a spontaneous retaking of the streets, and more—a retaking of the soul that saw this city become the cradle of last year's Arab spring revolution.

Ex-Guatemalan Army commander accused in massacre faces charges in U.S


By Dan Whitcomb | Reuters
A former Guatemalan army commander accused of taking part in the massacre of more than 200 people during that country's civil war has been returned to the United States to face charges he lied about his past to gain U.S. citizenship, authorities said on Saturday. Jorge Sosa, 54, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport accompanied by U.S. Marshals on Friday evening following his extradition from Calgary, Canada, where he was arrested in January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lori Haley said. U.S. prosecutors, who have no jurisdiction in Guatemala, have not charged Sosa in connection with the December 1982 massacre in the village of Dos Erres.