Six In The Morning Monday April 6

Bali Nine Australians' death row appeal fails

• 16 minutes ago
 
• From the section Asia

Two Australian drug smugglers sentenced to death cannot challenge the president's decision to refuse them clemency, an Indonesian court has ruled. 

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were the leaders of the "Bali Nine" group of heroin smugglers arrested in 2005. 

They are scheduled to be executed by firing squad in Indonesia soon. 

Australia has campaigned hard for their sentences to be commuted and their supporters say they have reformed.

Both men were appealing against an earlier ruling which had barred them from challenging Indonesian President Joko Widodo's rejection of their clemency pleas. 

Their lawyers had argued that Mr Widodo - whose stated policy is to deny clemency to drug offenders - had not given adequate consideration to the men's cases.

But the State Administrative Court in Jakarta upheld the earlier decision, saying it had no authority to take the case.

California water shortage: One drought for the rich and another for everyone else as Golden State goes brown again

New rules calling for a 25 per cent cut in urban water use look set to deepen long-standing divisions between the wealthy and the less well-off

TIM WALKER 

 

LOS ANGELES

The lush front lawns of Los Angeles are in the full bloom of spring, and it’s difficult to believe the Golden State is about to turn brown. But that is the inevitable implication of the drought, and of new rules which call for a 25 per cent cut in urban water use.

The mandatory restrictions are the first in the state’s history, but they look set to deepen long-standing divisions between the wealthy and the less well-off, and between California’s packed cities and its vast, sparsely populated agricultural areas. “It’s a different world,” Governor Jerry Brown said as he unveiled the plan. “We have to act differently.” What he did not say, however, was that some will have to act more differently than others.

In Los Angeles, whose residents use an average of 265 litres per day, an academic study found that the most affluent neighbourhoods used up to three times more water than others. In wealthy southern cities such as Malibu and Newport Beach, where people have large front lawns, consumption was more than 560 litres per capita in January.

Yarmouk camp in Damascus affront to humanity, says UN

Urgent plea for humanitarian access to Palestinian camp invaded by IS militants

Michael Jansen

The UN agency for refugees has made an urgent plea for humanitarian access to the Damascus suburb of Yarmouk, which was invaded last week by Islamic State militants.

“The lives of civilians in Yarmouk have never been more profoundly threatened,” said the UN Relief and Works Agency, which has called for a ceasefire to help civilians flee and to allow the delivery of food and water to the neighbourhood, which is home to thousands of mostly Palestinian refugees. 

Residents of the camp have no access to running water, food supplies and medical care and have endured more than two years of a siege that has led to starvation and disease.

Proxy War in Yemen: Saudi Arabia and Iran Vie for Regional Supremacy

By Dieter Bednarz, Christoph Reuter and Bernhard Zand

A Saudi Arabia-led coalition continues to bombard Yemen in an effort to stop the advance of an Iran-backed Shiite militia there. The conflict is becoming a proxy war for regional supremacy. The risks to the House of Saud are great.

On recent evenings, as Western foreign ministers negotiated fervently with the Iranian leadership in Lausanne, Switzerland, two young women in the Yemeni capital of Saana spent their time gazing fearfully into the darkening night sky. Nina Aqlan, a well-known civil rights activist, and her friend Ranim were on the lookout for Saudi Arabian fighter jets. Ranim was staying with Aqlan because her own apartment stands next to the headquarters of the Political Security Organization, Yemen's domestic intelligence agency. The building is considered a potential target for the Saudis and their allies.

"In the beginning, we thought they might bomb us for one or two nights. But it keeps getting worse!" says Ranim. In the background, the thump of the anti-aircraft batteries can be heard, occasionally interrupted by the thundering explosions of bomb detonations. Sometimes, the attacks last from early evening to midnight, they say over a Skype connection that repeatedly crashes. At other times, the bombing begins later and only ends at dawn.

Trolling for Putin: Russia's information war explained

By Marina Koreneva

Saint Petersburg (AFP) - Lyudmila Savchuk says it was money that wooed her into the ranks of the Kremlin's online army, where she bombarded website comment pages with eulogies of President Vladimir Putin, while mocking his adversaries.

"Putin is great," "Ukrainians are Fascists," "Europe is decadent": Savchuk, 34, listed the main messages she was told to put out on Internet forums after responding to a job advertisement online.

"Our job was to write in a pro-government way, to interpret all events in a way that glorifies the government's politics and Putin personally," she said.

Performing her duties as an Internet "troll", Savchuk kept up several blogs on the popular Russian platform LiveJournal, juggling the virtual identities of a housewife, a student and an athlete.

Edward Snowden to John Oliver: Don't Stop Sending Racy Pics Online

Americans shouldn't curb their use of the Internet simply to avoid having intimate pictures or personal information intercepted by the NSA, according to Edward Snowden.

"You shouldn't change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing," the former surveillance contractor turned leaker told HBO's John Oliver. "If we sacrifice our values because we're afraid, we don't care about those values very much."

Snowden spoke to the "Last Week Tonight" host in Moscow, where he has been for more than a year since being charged with espionage after leaking classified information regarding the NSA's extensive surveillance programs.