Six In The Morning Monday October 14

India launches investigation into temple stampede that left scores dead

Officials say many people injured on bridge at Ratangarh village during Navratri festival have now died

• Jason Burke in Delhi
• theguardian.com, Monday 14 October 2013 09.17 BST

Indian authorities have ordered a judicial investigation into the stampede near a temple in central India that killed more than 100 pilgrims on Sunday.

The death toll from the stampede at the temple in a remote part of central Madhya Pradesh state has risen to 115 after many succumbed to injuries, officials say.

Nearly half a million pilgrims had gathered at Ratangarh village temple to honour the Hindu mother goddess Durga on the last day of the popular 10-day Navratri festival. Thousands were crossing a bridge over the Sindh river leading to the temple when rumours spread that the narrow structure would collapse. Panic triggered a stampede that police appear to have tried to control with baton charges, worsening the situation.

ROBERT FISK

Monday 14 October 2013

Lebanon has cause for shame in its treatment of Syrian refugees

They are beaten in the immigration queues and cheated with exorbitant rents

I stopped to buy walnuts in Sidon last week from a sunburned man sitting on the pavement of the old souk. Like the walnuts – soft, almost creamy inside their iron-hard husks – he came from the Syrian town of Bloudan.

In years gone by, I would take the steam train from the old Haj station in Damascus up to Bloudan and Zabadani, the loco so slow that passengers could sometimes jump out of the carriages to pick fruit and then clamber back aboard. Bloudan was a kind of forested spa, all soft-flowing streams and water melons and crude cement houses and big posters of Hafez al-Assad, the dictator father of Bashar. There were Palestinian training camps in these hills and a regional headquarters for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – Lebanon was only eight miles away – and the smugglers’ trails ran from Bloudan and Zabadani across the Anti-Lebanon range into the Bekaa Valley.

Roman funeral for Nazi war criminal ‘intolerable’

Mayor concerned burial of Erich Priebke could become an occasion for Nazi fascism

Paddy Agnew

 

The mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, has said it would be “unacceptable and intolerable” were the Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke to be buried in the Eternal City.

Priebke, who died in Rome last Friday at the age of 100, played a major role in one of the most horrendous Nazi-fascist massacres of the second World War. That came in March 1944 when 335 Italians, including civilians, partisan fighters and Jews, were killed by way of a “reprisal” killing at Fosse Ardeatine, Rome, a “reprisal” allegedly ordered by Adolf Hitler and prompted by the killing in the city of 33 German soldiers blown up by a partisan bomb.

Priebke, who was present at Fosse Ardeatine for the massacre, had been responsible for overseeing the list of those to be shot. Furthermore, during questioning when briefly held in a British prisoner-of-war camp in Italy in 1946, he had admitted to having killed two of the victims.

HUNGER

Stopping starvation: 'Everyone can do something'

Activists are encouraging Germans to re-examine the problems of starvation and malnutrition as part of an action week by major food aid NGO Welthungerhilfe. Germany's president opened the event with a call for action.

"A lack of good nourishment in the first 1,000 days translates into a lack of good opportunities for the rest of one's life," said German President Joachim Gauck at the start of German food aid organizationWelthungerhilfe's action week on world hunger.

"This is not commensurate with human dignity," he continued in an address Sunday (13.10.2013) on German television, referencing the fundamental right promised in Germany's constitution. "The right to sufficient nourishment is a human right."

Germany's Welthungerhilfe NGO, or "World Hunger Aid," was founded in 1962 and hosts an annual week of events intended to encourage Germans to take action against starvation and malnutrition around the globe. The week centers around World Food Day, held on October 16, and includes a protest march, film and art evenings, discussion panels and a number of other events around the country.

Israel discovers Palestinian tunnel under Gaza border

October 14, 2013 - 9:50AM

Daniel Estrin

Jerusalem: The Israeli military has discovered an underground tunnel dug out from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip into Israel.

It says it believes militants intended to use the passageway to attack or kidnap Israelis.

In response, officials have frozen the transfer of all construction materials to the Palestinian territory.

A Hamas military spokesman in Gaza, Abu Obeida, was defiant over the discovery, saying on his official Twitter account "thousands" more tunnels would be dug out.

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Hamas has dug tunnels into Israel in the past.

In 2006, Hamas-allied militants sneaked into Israel through one, kidnapped a soldier, Gilad Shalit, and held him hostage in Gaza for five years.

Africa's ICC ultimatum poses dilemma for the West

Sapa-AFP | 14 October, 2013 08:56

The African Union’s demand for the International Criminal Court to defer trials against Kenya’s leadership is unlikely to get UN Security Council support but poses a dilemma for Western powers, analysts say.

An AU summit on Saturday stopped short of withdrawing from The Hague-based ICC, but it urgently asked for the deferral of the cases against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto so they can fulfil their duties to run the country.

“This declaration sends the wrong message, that politicians on the African continent will place their political interests above those of victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,” said Tawanda Hondora, an Amnesty International deputy director.

The Kenyan leaders have been charged with crimes against humanity for allegedly masterminding the ethnic violence that left at least 1,100 dead after disputed 2007 elections.