Six In The Morning Sunday June 7

Latin America & Caribbean

Fifa corruption: Documents show details of Jack Warner 'bribes'

By Ed ThomasBBC News, Trinidad

7 June 2015

A BBC investigation has seen evidence that details what happened to the $10m sent from Fifa to accounts controlled by former vice-president Jack Warner.

The money, sent on behalf of South Africa, was meant to be used for its Caribbean diaspora legacy programme.

But documents suggest Mr Warner used the payment for cash withdrawals, personal loans and to launder money.

The 72-year-old, who has been indicted by the FBI for corruption, denies all claims of wrongdoing.

The papers seen by the BBC detail three wire transfers by Fifa.

In the three transactions - on 4 January, 1 February and 10 March 2008 - funds totalling $10m (£6.5m) from Fifa accounts were received into Concacaf accounts controlled by Jack Warner.

Half the dolphins caught in Japan hunt exported despite global outcry: report

 Of the live dolphins caught in the town of Taiji about half find buyers in China and other countries, it’s reported, despite criticism of the hunt

Agence France-Presse

Sunday 7 June 2015 05.35 BST

About half of the live dolphins caught in the Japanese coastal town of Taiji were exported to China and other countries despite global criticism of the hunting technique used, a news report has said.

The so-called “drive hunt” method has been criticised overseas as cruel and Japanese zoos and aquariums were recently forced to vow not to buy animals caught with the controversial fishing.

A total of 760 live dolphins were sold between September 2009 and August 2014 in Japan, Kyodo News said Saturday, quoting data from Japan’s Fisheries Research Agency and other statistics.

They show that 354 were exported to 12 countries, including 216 to China, 36 to Ukraine, 35 to South Korea and 15 to Russia. One dolphin was exported to the United States.

PATRICK COCKBURN

Sunday 7 June 2015

War with Isis: As the militant threat grows, so does the West's self-deception

World View: Chinese mandarins used to claim rhubarb was a war-winning weapon. Our leaders also fantasise

In the declining years of the Chinese empire, high officials developed a handy way of dealing with military setbacks and defeats by foreign powers. They simply announced that the heroic forces of the emperor had won yet another victory against the barbarian enemy.

To do those officials credit, they saw that serial mendacity was only a short-term solution to their problems and the news about China’s calamitous defeats could not be permanently suppressed. But they believed that by the time this became apparent, one of their country’s hidden strengths would have kicked in which would give them a tremendous advantage in any drawn-out conflict.

Erdogan’s bid for absolute power at stake in Turkey's general election

Latest update : 2015-06-07

As Turks head to the polls on Sunday, the general elections are not so much about which party will win as they are about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bid to expand his authoritarian powers if his conservative AKP party wins an absolute majority.

The June 7 ballot will be a key test for Erdogan. For the first time since 2002, opinion polls suggest that the president’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) may not get enough backing to form a single-party government. A coalition would likely spoil Erdogan’s ambitious plan to rewrite the constitution and transform Turkey into a presidential, rather than a parliamentary, system.

Analysts say this ballot is more of a referendum on Erdogan’s powers than a general election. And so far it is not looking good for him.

Amnesty International calls for probe into Nigerian army war crimes

05 JUN 2015 00:00 DAVID SMITH

The organisation wants senior military officers investigated for war crimes including murder, starvation, suffocation and torture.

Senior military officers in Nigeria should be investigated for war crimes including the murder, starvation, suffocation and torturing to death of 8 000 people, Amnesty International has said.

An investigation carried out over several years, perhaps the most damning account yet of the military response to Boko Haram, casts a shadow over the first foreign trip of the new Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, during which he is likely to discuss a fresh regional strategy against the Islamist group.

This week Amnesty set out the case against five senior Nigerian officers in a 133-page report based on hundreds of interviews, including with military sources, and leaked defence ministry documents.

The Secret History of SEAL Team 6: Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines

The unit best known for killing Osama bin Laden has been converted into a global manhunting machine with limited outside oversight.

By MARK MAZZETTI, NICHOLAS KULISH, CHRISTOPHER DREW, SERGE F. KOVALESKI, SEAN D. NAYLOR and JOHN ISMAYJUNE 6, 2015

They have plotted deadly missions from secret bases in the badlands of Somalia. In Afghanistan, they have engaged in combat so intimate that they have emerged soaked in blood that was not their own. On clandestine raids in the dead of the night, their weapons of choice have ranged from customized carbines to primeval tomahawks.

Around the world, they have run spying stations disguised as commercial boats, posed as civilian employees of front companies and operated undercover at embassies as male-female pairs, tracking those the United States wants to kill or capture.

Those operations are part of the hidden history of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, one of the nation’s most mythologized, most secretive and least scrutinized military organizations. Once a small group reserved for specialized but rare missions, the unit best known for killing Osama bin Laden has been transformed by more than a decade of combat into a global manhunting machine.