Six In The Morning

Syria blamed for Lebanon car bomb
Anti-Syrian politicians in Lebanon have accused Damascus of being behind a powerful car bomb that killed the head of Lebanon's internal intelligence.

20 October 2012 Last updated at 04:49 GMT
Opposition leader Saad Hariri and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt both said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was behind the bombing in Beirut. A Syrian minister condemned the blast. Mr Hariri's coalition called on the government to resign. Friday's blast left eight people dead and wounded dozens. It occurred in the mainly Christian district of Ashrafiya, in a busy street close to the headquarters of Saad Hariri's 14 March coalition. Internal intelligence head Wissam al-Hassan was among those who died. He was close to Mr Hariri, a leading critic of the government in neighbouring Syria. Mr Hassan led an investigation that implicated Damascus in the 2005 bombing that killed Mr Hariri's father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Gaddafi's last moments: 'I saw the hand holding the gun and I saw it fire'
Former rebel fighters in the Libyan city of Sirte recall the capture and killing of their reviled dictator a year ago

Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk, Saturday 20 October 2012 08.00 BST
Moustafa Zoubi trained his battered Kalashnikov on a large storm water pipe, his gun barrel darting between the shadow at its entrance and a frantic commotion on the ridge above. Fighters were scrambling in every direction, shouting commands and barking orders for reinforcements into their mobile phones. One radio call in particular was repeatedly shouted: "Call sign one." Some of the frantic men nearby took cover behind a grass berm, looking towards an area past a twisted and smouldering convoy of cars and trucks for the source of the incoming gunfire. Others made for nearby buildings. All the time, gungho men in war-ravaged trucks were arriving, tyres squealing on the hot black bitumen as they neared the maelstrom on the outskirts of the Libyan city of Sirte.

China says ignorance of safe sex to blame for 13 million abortions a year'


CLIFFORD COONAN BEIJING SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2012
More than 13 million abortions a year – or 1,500 an hour – are carried out in China, data from a government think tank has shown, and a major factor behind the number of unwanted pregnancies is that many young people don't know how to use contraceptives properly. The figure, from the State Family Planning Commission's Science and Technology Research Institute, is all the more remarkable when you consider that the One Child Policy of population control has been in place for more than three decades, and a central plank of that policy is contraception.

Creation of EU banking union 'will take years'
EU leaders still have a number of thorny political and legal questions to answer before they can set up an effective banking union. Expect heated debates over regulatory issues and how to fund the body.

EUROPEAN UNION
If nothing else, the debt crisis in the eurozone has revealed that the currency union needs a banking union. At least, that's what leaders decided at an EU summit in Brussels in June. The first step to a common banking union for Europeans is creating a shared banking supervisory body. Then, when emergency strikes, it needs to have money to jump in and make loans to ailing banks. It also needs a process to allow banks to go bankrupt in an orderly fashion, which requires a common fund for banks with which they secure each other's deposits. There are such methods to steer banks in some of the European Union nations, but not in all of them. The EU would like to see the system centrally organized, since 27 different regulatory bodies are less effective and independent than a European supervisory body would be.

EU to help Mali retake north from Islamists
European Union leaders have vowed to help Mali reconquer its vast desert north from armed rebels and Islamists.

Sapa | 19 10月, 2012 12:48
This help will come in the form of the EU backing up an international military force and training Malian defence forces As African and European leaders gathered in Bamako to agree a plan to retake the north, a draft EU summit statement obtained by AFP said the situation "poses an immediate threat to the Sahel region as well as to West and North Africa and to Europe." "The EU will support Mali in its efforts to restore the rule of law and re-etablish a fully sovereign democratic government with authority throughout Malian territory," the statement said.

Uruguay's Senate approves abortion bill: Will there be a ripple effect?
Uruguay's Senate approved a bill legalizing first-trimester abortions, and the president says he will sign it. Abortion is still a political hot potato in Latin America, but some say such legislation could spread.

By Ed Stocker, Correspondent / October 19, 2012
Uruguay paved the way for one of the most far-reaching abortion rights laws in Latin America this week when its Senate voted to legalize the procedure during the first trimester of pregnancy. The controversial decision has sparked speculation as to whether regional neighbors – from liberal Argentina to conservative Chile – could follow suit. Uruguay’s Senate vote on Wednesday put the southern cone nation “at the forefront of countries that have established [these] rights,” says Véronica Pérez, a political scientist at Montevideo’s University of the Republic. President Jose Mujica, a former leftist guerrilla, is expected to sign the bill into law. Though Uruguay is already considered one of the most liberal countries in the region – it was one of the first Latin American nations to officially separate the state from the Catholic church in the early 1900s, and it recently floated the idea of legalizing marijuana – the abortion debate has been met with considerable opposition.