Friday, December 11, 2015

Six In The Morning Friday December 11

COP21: Climate deal due Saturday after more all-night talks

Negotiators at the Paris climate summit aim to wrap up a global agreement to curb global warming on Saturday - a day later than expected, hosts France said.
"Things are moving in the right direction," said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is chairing the summit.
But more compromise is needed if an agreement is to be reached, a BBC correspondent at the talks says.
A deal signed in Paris would come into being in 2020.
Mr Fabius told French television that "the atmosphere is good, things are positive" and that a new compromise deal would be presented on Saturday.
Participants at COP21 - as the UN conference is called - have been working on a draft text, prepared by the French presidency, since Wednesday.
This was seen as a significant moment after discussions that began in 2011 about a new global agreement that would stake out a long-term strategy for dealing with climate change.




China prepares to gag free speech champion Pu Zhiqiang

After 19 months behind bars, one of China’s most admired civil rights lawyers set to go on trial accused of sending irreverent tweets

In another era, Pu Zhiqiang might have live-tweeted the Tiananmen massacre.
Instead, as the bloodbath unfolded around him on that pre-smartphone night in the early summer of 1989, the student leader took a solemn vow: if he made it out with his life he would use it to give voice to those who had died.
“That was unquestionably a pivotal moment for him,” said William J Dobson, an American writer who spent time with the Tiananmen survivor while writing a book on 21st century dictatorships.
“I don’t think that it is necessarily guilt as much as it is a real commitment to see through what had motivated students and workers and so many others to gather there in 1989.”

Fictional sex scene lands Egyptian writers in court for breach of public morals

Two Egyptian writers face charges after a reader said a fictional sex scene left him physically debilitated. What the authors see as an incomprehensible injustice, prosecutors call an infringement of public morality.
Egyptian writer and journalist Ahmed Naji is to appear in court on Saturday. He faces charges of "infringing on public decency," after a chapter of his book "Istikhdam al-Hayah" ("The Guide for Using Life") appeared in "Akhbar al-Adab," a literary magazine where Naji works.
One of the magazine's readers, Hani Salah Tawfiq, filed a complaint against Naji in 2014, three months after the chapter from the novel was initially published. Tawfiq claimed that his heartbeat fluctuated, his blood pressure dropped dangerously low and that he is now seriously ill after having read Naji's fictional story.
After almost a year of investigations, Naji was notified by his lawyer, Mahmoud Othman, that he, as well as his editor-in-chief, Tarek al-Taher, will be facing charges and could get up to two years in prison and a fine of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (about $1,275 or 1,190 euros).

Leading Rwandan genocide suspect arrested in DR Congo

One of nine top fugitive Rwandan genocide suspects, a former mayor accused of slaughtering thousands of people and organising mass rapes in 1994, has been arrested, the United Nations said.

Ladislas Ntaganzwa, who had a $5 million (4.6 million euro) US bounty on his head and has been indicted by a UN-backed court for genocide and crimes against humanity, was captured in Democratic Republic of Congo.
Around 800,000 people -- mostly members of the minority Tutsi community -- were slaughtered in the 100-day orgy of violence in 1994, largely by ethnic Hutus.
Ntaganzwa is accused of organising "the massacre of thousands of Tutsis at various locations," the UN-backed Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) said in a statement received Thursday.
"He was also alleged to have orchestrated the rape and sexual violence committed against many women," it said.
Ntaganzwa, 53, is expected to face trial in Rwanda on nine counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and violating the Geneva Conventions.

Maid, 11, accuses cricket star of abuse: 'They used to beat me with sticks'

She's known as "Happy" but when Mahfuza Akhter was found bruised and crying in the streets of Dhaka she was anything but.
The 11-year-old former live-in maid of one of Bangladesh's cricketing heroes is at the center of perhaps the biggest celebrity trial the country has ever seen.
She claims that she was abused by international cricket star Shahadat Hossain and his wife, Nritto Shahadat, while working in their home.
"They used to beat me with sticks, kitchen utensils, punch me, and scratch me. I would be slapped a lot," she says, pointing to a distinct scar on her face.

FARC rebels last days in the Colombian jungle?

Al Jazeera gains inside access as the longest-standing rebel group in the Americas prepares to down its arms.


Bogota, Colombia - Since the beginning of peace negotiations between FARC and the Colombian government, few journalists have had access to rebel camps.
Their political leaders in Havana, Cuba, have spoken on an almost a daily basis through the advances - and the many hiccups - in the talks, but we heard precious little from the commanders and foot soldiers holding out in the jungle.
That's why we were particularly intrigued when we managed to access one. We wanted to know how they were living through what most likely will be the last months of the longest-standing rebel group in the Americas.
Many Colombians continue to be sceptical about the peace talks. And one could say: rightly so.
FARC has negotiated with the government on three previous occasions and every time it ended in complete failure.

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