Six In The Morning

Why U.S. is being humiliated by the hunt for Snowden

By Simon Tisdall, special for CNN

The increasingly slapstick global steeplechase in pursuit of Edward Snowden, the former American contractor who leaked top-secret details of surveillance programs, looks like a cross between "The Hunt for Red October" and "The Bonfire of the Vanities."

Nobody, except perhaps Snowden himself, is coming out of this well.

While the CIA's Public Enemy Number One plays Captain Marko Ramius, keeping stumm beneath the (radio) waves in the Moscow transit zone, Very Important People are making themselves ridiculous in vintage Tom Wolfe style.

High on the list is John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State. Huffing and puffing, Kerry warned China and Russia of "consequences" if, as seems probable, they have conspired to deliberately thwart U.S. justice by twisting the long arm of the law.

Mushrooming legal highs leave drug control system floundering, UN warns

Annual world drug report says number of new legal highs available on world market now outstrips number of illicit drugs under international control

• Alan Travis, home affairs editor
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 June 2013 09.46 BST

The international drug control system is "floundering" for the first time in the face of the rapid rise of potentially harmful legal highs or new psychoactive drugs, the United Nations has warned.

The UN's annual world drug report says the number of new legal highs available on the world market – more than 300 – has now outstripped the total number of illicit drugs under international control.

The 2013 report published on Wednesday says the newly developed legal high industry has gone global in the past year, with 70 out of the 80 countries surveyed reporting the emergence of new psychoactive substances with significant market share.

Knife-wielding attackers kill 27 during violent riots in China's troubled Xinjiang-Xinhua province

Remote village in China becomes scene of bloodiest unrest
since 2009

HEATHER SAUL

WEDNESDAY 26 JUNE 2013

Knife-wielding assailants launched a frenzied attack in a
remote town in China's restive far western region, leaving 27 dead in one of
the bloodiest incidents since 2009.

The early-morning violence on Wednesday, which state media were referring to as riots, also left at least three people injured in the Turkic-speaking Xinjiang (shihn-jahng) region, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Police stations, a government building and a construction site were reportedly targeted in the attacks.

The riot is deemed to be the most severe unrest in the regional capital since nearly 200 were killed four years ago.

'Buddhist Terror' article banned in Myanmar

June 26, 2013 - 10:32AM

Myanmar has banned a controversial Time magazine cover story on Buddhist-Muslim religious violence "to prevent further conflict", according to a government spokesman, after days of angry reaction to the article.

The ban on the article, which carried a front page photograph of a prominent radical Buddhist monk accused of fuelling anti-Muslim violence with the headline 'The Face of Buddhist Terror', comes despite the apparent easing of censorship rules in a reforming nation whose former military regime closely controlled the media.

Nigeria hangs four criminals, fifth alive after gallows glitch

25 JUN 2013 10:02 MICHELLE FAUL

Nigeria has hanged four criminals in its first known executions since 2006, and a rights group is trying to keep a fifth, Thankgod Ebhos, alive.

Traumatised inmates heard screams and thuds from the gallows as Nigerian authorities hanged four convicted criminals on Monday in the West African nation's first known executions since 2006, said a human rights lawyer on Tuesday.

A fifth man is yet to be hanged at Benin City Prison after the executioner had technical problems with the gallows, Chino Obiagwu of the national lawyers' rights group Lepad told Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Amnesty International said the man, identified as Thankgod Ebhos by Obiagwu, was at "imminent risk of execution".

The London-based organisation's deputy Africa director, Lucy Freeman, said the hangings would mark a "truly dark day for human rights" in the nation.

26 June 2013 Last updated at 07:19 GMT

Brazil Congress rejects controversial amendment

Brazil's Congress has rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that was a key grievance of protesters who took to streets across the country.

Demonstrators had argued PEC 37, which would have limited the power of federal prosecutors to investigate crimes, might open the way for more corruption.

On Tuesday, the measure was defeated by 430 votes to nine.

Congress also voted to use all the royalties from newly discovered oil fields for education and health.

Earlier, the government modified its plan for political reform in order to speed up the process, officials said.