Six In The Morning Friday June 20

20 June 2014 Last updated at 06:49

Iraq crisis: Fierce battles for Baiji and Tal Afar

Islamist-led militants and pro-government forces are engaged in fierce battles for the Baiji oil refinery and Tal Afar airport in northern Iraq.

Baiji, Iraq's biggest refinery, is surrounded by the rebels, who say they have seized most of Tal Afar airport.

The fighting comes a day after the US said it would send some 300 military advisers to help the fight against the insurgents.

President Barack Obama stressed that US troops would not fight in Iraq.

US Secretary of State Kerry is expected to travel to Iraq soon to press for a more representative cabinet, hoping this could ease tensions between the country's rival Muslim sects.

Global refugees hit 50 million people, major new UN report shows

JAMIE MERRILL  

Friday 20 June 2014

A major new report has revealed that the numbers of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide has soared to 50 million people for the first time since the Second World War.

The figure is contained in the latest United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) Global Trends report, which was published today. The report shows that 51.2 million people were forcibly displaced by the end of 2013, an increase of six million people on 2012.

“We are seeing here the immense costs of not ending wars, of failing to resolve or prevent conflict,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “Peace is today dangerously in deficit. Humanitarians can help as a palliative, but political solutions are vitally needed. Without this, the alarming levels of conflict and the mass suffering that is reflected in these figures will continue.”

Russian opposition crushed by wave of repression

The government is quietly tightening the screws on the liberal opposition

Isabel Gorst

The elderly Russian ladies who watch over the exhibits at the Hermitage in St Petersburg are usually quick to spot troublemakers at the city’s most venerated museum.

But even they were nonplussed when an art activist climbed into an ancient Roman sarcophagus under their watch last week and began scrubbing off the logo of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party stamped on his naked torso.

As political protests go, the “Unwashed Russia” performance was quirky, to say the least. But as the Kremlin cracks down on its critics, the loony fringe is fast becoming the only space left in Russia for dissent.

Wheels and deals in dusty Bukavu

20 JUN 2014 00:00 GREGORY MTHEMBU-SALTER

The well-heeled flock to a marble-clad hotel in a city renowned as a smuggling hub for gold.

Bukavu, nestled on the southwest corner of Lake Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has a major dust problem during the dry season.

Vehicles ply the cracked streets of this once-elegant city from early morning, stirring up red dust clouds.

I remembered that down on La Botte, a narrow, pretty peninsula that projects a kilometre from the city centre into the lake, with a few narrow streets and large, old, crumbling houses, there used to be a “Cercle Sportif”, with lawns, a clubhouse with a bar and lakeside access.

The last time I visited the Cercle had been in 2001, during the country’s long-running civil war, and then broader conflict, when the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie ruled Bukavu and the rest of the eastern DRC.

China says moving 2nd oil rig closer to Vietnam

 

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

BEIJING (AP) — China said Thursday it is moving a second oil rig closer to Vietnam's coast, showing its determination to press its territorial claims and continue searching for resources in disputed waters despite a tense confrontation with Vietnam over another oil rig to the south.

The 600-meter (1,970-foot) -long rig is being towed southeast of its current position south of Hainan Island and will be in its new location closer to Vietnam by Friday, the Maritime Safety Administration said on its website. It asked vessels in the area to give it a wide berth.

Vietnam's government isn't expected to react strongly to the placement of the second rig because it lies far to the north of the politically sensitive waters surrounding the Paracel Islands, where ships from the two countries have been ramming each other for more than 40 days near the first oil rig.

Clowning Around: Syrian Kids Begin to Heal Through Laughter

The Syrian children sat in guarded silence as the clowns tumbled out in a blur of colorful polka dots and suspenders, then burst into laughter as one of the performers kicked her glittery high heels into the air to the toots of a blue trombone.

One of the clowns strummed a guitar while gliding around on stilts. Another, his face painted like a sad mime, juggled three white globes in the air in a show set against the backdrop of a makeshift tent camp in Lebanon.

For the 50 or so children in attendance, all of them refugees from the civil war in neighboring Syria, the clowns provided a brief escape from the horrors they've seen and the challenges of growing up far from home. They are among the more than 1 million Syrians who have flooded into Lebanon over the past three years, fleeing a war that has ripped apart their homeland.