Six In The Morning

India's PM responds to gang rape protests

Manmohan Singh appeals for "peace and security" and promises to protect women against sex crimes.

Last Modified: 24 Dec 2012 07:18

Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India, has vowed to protect women in the wake of violent demonstrations against the "national epidemic" of sex crimes.

He spoke after police clashed with hundreds of protesters for the second straight day in the Indian capital New Delhi, after earlier imposing a ban on mass demonstrations against the gang rape of a medical student in the capital last weekend.

"There is genuine and justified anger and anguish at this ghastly incident," Singh said in a televised statement, appealing for "peace and calm" after the clashes in the heart of the capital.

"I assure you that we will make all possible efforts to ensure security and safety to all women in this country."

Police had shot tear gas and water cannon, and used batons to disperse demonstrators, as the crowd at Delhi's landmark India Gate monument defied orders banning the protests and swelled into the thousands.

Scuffles occurred between protesters and police near government buildings, with demonstrators shouting slogans against the authorities and throwing stones and bottles at their barricades. Angry protesters later overturned a vehicle and seized police vans.

ROBERT FISK

A word of advice about the Middle East – we’ve reached the ‘tipping point’ with cliches

You've got to be careful when Syria's rebels are perpetually "closing in"

Remember the days when we thought Egypt’s path to democracy was a done deal? Western-trained Mohamed Morsi had invited the people to come and meet him in Hosni Mubarak’s former presidential palace, the old military toffs in the “Supreme Council of the Armed Forces” had been pensioned off and the International Monetary Fund was waiting to bestow some of those cruel deprivations upon Egypt that would ready it for our financial benevolence. How happy the Middle East optimists were by mid-2012.

Next door, Libya produced a victory for nice, pro-Western secularist Mahmoud Jibril, promising freedom, stability, a new home for the West in one of the Arab world’s most fecund oil producers. It was a place where even US diplomats could wander around virtually unprotected.

AFGHANISTAN

Kabul blames tax evasion on "foreign" firms.

The Afghan finance ministry has accused some NATO-linked foreign companies of "running away" from paying taxes. This follows a claim by President Hamid Karzai that corruption is his country is "imposed" from outside.

The tax evasion claim - first leveled in an Afghan 1TV television network report on Saturday - was reasserted on Sunday by senior ministry official Waheedullah Tawhidi.

In Kabul, he told the German news agency dpa that foreign companies involved in security, logistics, communications and media were "evading tax."

The Afghan television report put the taxes lost at some 53 million euros ($70 million). Some 15 foreign companies, including 11 that provide logistics to the NATO-led coalition, were "violating Afghanistan's rules by not paying taxes," it said.

Islamists smash more Timbuktu mausoleums

Sapa-AFP | 24 12月, 2012 06:17

Armed groups occupying Timbuktu in northern Mali used pickaxes to smash up any remaining mausoleums in the ancient city, an Islamist leader said.

The rebels' ruthless implementation of their version of Islamic law comes just days after the United Nations approved a military force to wrest back control of the conflict-ridden area.

"Not a single mausoleum will remain in Timbuktu, Allah doesn't like it," Ansar Dine leader Abou Dardar told AFP. "We are in the process of smashing all the hidden mausoleums in the area."

Witnesses confirmed the claims and one resident, who said he belongs to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), another militant group occupying the city since a March coup plunged the west African state into chaos.

Uruguay postpones vote on 'state as dealer' approach to drug regulation - but not for long?

President Mujica always said he wouldn't push the proposal if a majority of Uruguayans didn't accept it. But few think this postponement means the project is forever shelved.
By Sara Miller Llana, Staff Writer

MEXICO CITY

Uruguay has been on the vanguard of drug policy reform in the Americas, proposing a state regulatory market for the cultivation and consumption of marijuana. (See our cover on “Latin America reinventing the War on Drugs” here).

But last week the project’s No. 1 proponent – and perhaps the globe’s most trailblazing reformer – Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, told Parliament to postpone the vote.

President Mujica always said he would not go forward with the proposal if a majority of Uruguayans did not accept it. And a new poll by the firm Cifra shows 64 percent of those surveyed remain opposed.

“Don’t pass a law because it has a majority in Parliament,” the president was quoted as saying in the local press. “The majority has to be in the streets.”

Citing Broken System, Critics Fight Russia’s Adoption Ban

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: December 23, 2012

MOSCOW — The orphans’ faces can be called up on screen, their photos the size of postage stamps, along with a few data points and a note about their personalities, often just a word or two.

Kirill P., age 6, from Rostov in the south — hazel eyes, brown hair — wears a sweatshirt with dragons on it and is described simply as “sociable.” Angelina F., 16 months, from Khabarovsk in the Far East — gray eyes, brown hair — is actively developing an interest in her surroundings and “responds to any caring and affection.”

Maksim N., who just turned 11, is “mobile, restless, outgoing, likes to play games.” This isRussia’s “federal database of orphans and children without parental care,” a publicly available electronic repository of the forlorn and forgotten — more than 118,000 of them.