Six in The Morning Thursday June 4

Yangtze boat disaster: China keeps lid on information, as hopes dim

June 4, 2015 - 5:43PM

Edward Wong and Austin Ramzy

Jianli: China is seeking to maintain a tight grip on information about a capsized cruise ship, even as hopes dim for the hundreds of people aboard who remained missing and questions emerged about the vessel and the captain's decision to sail into a storm.

In a show of openness, the Chinese government allowed a handful of reporters to visit the scene of rescue efforts on Wednesday on the Yangtze River, where the ship with 456 passengers and crew overturned during a violent storm on Monday night.

But the time of transparency was brief. Police checkpoints prevented access to the river and movement through parts of the nearby town of Jianli. Hotels were told not to accept journalists unless they had registered at a media centre run by local propaganda officials. Likewise, the police blocked journalists' access to local hospitals.

Female genital mutilation practised in Iran, study reveals

First authoritative research shows FGM is carried out in four major provinces

Saeed Kamali Dehghan

Thursday 4 June 2015 09.00 BST

The first authoritative study into female genital mutilation in Iran has found the practice is being carried out in at least four major provinces while officials are silent on the matter.

According to research by social anthropologist Kameel Ahmady released on Thursday, FGM is more prevalent in the southern province of Hormozgan and its nearby islands (Qeshm and Hormuz) than in any other parts of the country.

It is also being practised to a lesser degree in Kurdistan, Kermanshah and West Azerbaijan provinces, which are situated in western Iran close to the Iraq border.

Ahmady’s research shows that FGM is mainly an issue concerning the Shafi’i sect of Sunni Muslim Iranians, a minority in the Shia-dominated country. Only a small fraction of the Shia population living in proximity of Sunni communities practise FGM.

Syria civil war: Meet the military commander who says his soldiers will not rest until every inch of war torn country is free of Islamist 'terrorists'

Robert Fisk speaks to a colonel confidently preparing his men for battle at Frikeh in the Orontes river valley where Assad's troops were besieged just last month

ROBERT FISK 

 

FRIKEH

 

Thursday 04 June 2015

Approaching front lines is usually the same. First come the fields and the farmers still hopefully taking in their crops, the little villages where the buses and trucks are mixed up with military traffic, the barber shops and clothing stores catering for the soldiers.

Then comes the occasional smashed house, checkpoints and a disused railway line, followed by a village of ruins and burning fields where the shells have set the corn alight. There are a few tanks skulking behind a gutted villa, columns of brown smoke and then the officer in the army who knows – is absolutely convinced, in a very loud voice – that victory will be theirs.

It was like that along the Orontes, just half a mile from the Islamist lines outside Jisr al-Shugur. The villages were as unknown as those of the Somme must have been in 1913. Shatha, Jourine, al-Ziarah and finally Frikeh on a knoll about the captured town, now entirely in the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, from which the last besieged Syrian troops fought their way out to death or freedom last month.

Squalor and death in Egypt's prisons

Thousands of political prisoners are languishing in Egypt's prisons amid allegations of abuse and torture. But now a rising number of deaths is causing even more concern, as Kristen McTighe reports from Cairo.

For Abdullah Elshamy, an Egyptian journalist who spent more than 300 days in jail and more than one month in a solitary confinement cell at the notorious Scorpion wing of Cairo's Tora prison, the death in detention of two leading Muslim Brotherhood members in less than one month comes as little surprise.

"All the Muslim Brotherhood leaders at Scorpion prison are kept in solitary confinement without any contact with any other prisoner," says Elshamy, whose imprisonment sparked international outcry after images were smuggled out of jail showing the once hefty Al Jazeera correspondent drastically gaunt and frail after a lengthy hunger strike. “If anything happens, you could be there for God-knows how many hours before anyone finds out."

"Prison, the whole thing, it's inhumane," he told DW. "Lacking any human dignity."

Fifa crisis: Ex-official Chuck Blazer details bribe-taking

• 4 June 2015
 
• From the sectionUS and Canada

Former top Fifa official Chuck Blazer has admitted that he and others on the executive committee agreed to accept bribes in connection with the choice of South Africa as 2010 World Cup hosts.

The American said he also facilitated bribes over the 1998 event.

The admissions come in a newly released transcript from a 2013 US hearing in which he pleads guilty to 10 charges.

The US has launched a wide-ranging criminal case that engulfed Fifa and led President Sepp Blatter to resign.

Last week US prosecutors indicted 14 people on charges of bribery, racketeering and money laundering. Four others had already been charged, including Mr Blazer.

The US justice department alleges they accepted bribes and kickbacks estimated at more than $150m (£97m) over a 24-year period.